


Alpha Centauri

by Hth



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-12 01:56:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 105,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alpha Centauri is a trinary star system composed of a primary pair of yellow dwarfs (Alpha Centauri A and B) gravitationally bound to an outlying red dwarf (Proxima Centauri).  This is exactly like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Contact

“WHAT?” Rodney snapped when he opened the door, and John was all set to say _hey, whoa, it’s me_. It only took him that one split second to realize that Rodney knew good and well who it was.

“You’re the best argument for decaf I’ve ever seen.” Sometimes a joke could get Rodney out of his moods. Although normally his moods were lab-related; normally he was in fairly high spirits when he was off-duty with a bored and horny John Sheppard on his doorstep. So this was...not normal.

Rodney frowned. “I-I’m sorry,” he said, and that was when John was _sure_ that something was spectacularly wrong. “You startled me, I was – working – napping.”

“Working on napping?”

“I was working and then I was napping, and you – I woke up. Hello. I thought you had – things. You said you had things tonight.” He sounded vaguely accusatory, he looked more than vaguely rumpled and jumpier than usual, and he still hadn’t invited John in, or even so much as moved out of the doorway, leaving John standing in the hallway like the freaking Jehovah’s Witnesses.

He still hadn’t moved out of the doorway....

“What’s going on in there?” John asked, and the way that Rodney flung himself sideways when John leaned confirmed his suspicions. The idea of Rodney McKay keeping secrets was kind of funny, actually. That part of your brain that kept you from saying everything that was on your mind at the specific moment it occurred to you? Yeah, Rodney had removed that and replaced it with an extra slot for storing prime numbers. “No, seriously,” he said, more amused the longer he thought about it. “Whatcha got in there? Hoarding food?”

“Yes,” Rodney said loftily. “As a matter of fact I am, operative word _hoarding_ , mutually exclusive with _sharing_ , and I am not ashamed of it. A man has to do what a man has to do. Goodnight, see you at breakfast.”

“Usually when I see somebody at breakfast,” John said, trying a different tactic, “I expect to be shown a good time the night before....”

“Really, well, that’s fascinating, given that you eat in a cafeteria, and certainly I admire your dedication to morale, and if anyone could, ah, entertain the troops single-handedly, I do imagine that it would be you, but this is not in fact _a good time_ for me, which I think I’ve made fairly clear, and oh, God, don’t look at me like – like I’ve abducted your puppy. You’re so manipulative, has anyone ever told you that? And you can’t even be very good at it, if I’ve noticed, because I’m not alert to that sort of thing, I’m surprisingly oblivious when it comes to social interaction– “

“I wouldn’t say _surprisingly_.”

“You have to go away,” Rodney said, and he’d started to sound so genuinely desperate that it was becoming less amusing and more worrisome. Could he be in some kind of trouble that he wasn’t free to talk about? Or maybe it wasn’t Rodney at all – that wouldn’t even really blow the curve for weird this month.

Just as he was about to offer Rodney the choice between letting him in and having him call Bates up here with a security team, something moved inside the room. John’s hand flew to his side, but of course, _fuck_ , he hadn’t exactly come here armed for bear, and he was making a mental note to have a P90 goddamn arc-welded to his thigh when his hand stopped and then his brain stopped and Rodney put his hand over his face and groaned, “Unbelievable. These things only happen to _me_ , I have no idea why.”

“‘Scuse me,” Ronon said. He was getting more mannerly every day, John noted, with the part of his brain that wasn’t noting that Ronon was sidling out of Rodney’s quarters, gracefully twisting through so that Rodney barely had to shift aside at all. He glanced at John with his quick, curious eyes and a strange little smile on his face that was stuck midway between wry amusement and mild embarrassment as he stretched up his arms and let his sweater slip down over his smooth, hard, broad, recently naked torso.

“Some would say it was karma, I suppose,” Rodney kept muttering, in a sad monotone, “but really, I do everything for the greater good, I think of myself as a decent person. These are the times that try men’s souls, but inasmuch as I believe in a higher power– “

“Sheppard,” Ronon acknowledged with a nod as he extracted himself from Rodney’s doorway and began to amble off like he had nothing but time to kill.

“G’night,” John said faintly to his back.

When he turned back around from staring, Rodney held up his hands and said, “Now, before you work yourself into a frenzy, I should point out– “

“I suppose I can fucking come _inside_ now, instead of standing out here like a moron? I mean, you don’t have Teyla in there, do you? There’s not some kind of, oh, I don’t know, naked staff meeting that I let slip my mind?”

“You can come in.”

Inside was fine, except for the way that he was now in full view of Rodney’s bed. It didn’t appear as if maid service had been by, at least not since, oh, _the last time Rodney had gotten laid in it_. Rather athletically laid, if the state of the sheets was any indication.

John deliberately turned his back on the bed. “Okay,” he said. “So....”

“So?”

“What happens now?”

“I– “ It didn’t seem to be what Rodney expected. He looked as though he were running simulations in his head of a number of different scenarios. “Are you breaking up with me?” he blurted out at last, and that was– Okay. That was cute. Also, it proved that interrogating Rodney was the kind of job that involved a lot of shutting up and letting him talk himself right into the noose.

“Am I breaking up with you?” he repeated thoughtfully.

“If you are, I think I should say – I think – it’s _unfair_ of you, really, because we never – no one ever said– “

“No. No one ever did.”

A tiny flash of anger moved in Rodney’s eyes, and it took all of John’s military discipline (which he did have, no matter what anyone said behind his back, or to his face, or for that matter in his personnel file) not to grin. This wasn’t going to be any fun at all if Rodney just gave in. “I always assumed,” Rodney said, drawing himself up haughtily, “that you preferred to leave yourself free to gallivant around the galaxy with whatever you found willing.”

“Well, exactly,” he said pleasantly. “What’s not to prefer? I definitely prefer that to _you_ gallivanting around the galaxy with whatever you find willing.”

Rodney gaped in outrage. “I am not _gallivanting_ – and if I were, I have just as much right as you do – well, maybe I was gallivanting, and if so, more power to me! I happen to be a man of substance, of _stature_ in this city, a brilliant and worldly man in the prime of my life, not to mention a man of some heroism in the face of overwhelming odds, and just because you persist in believing your role in my sex life is to do me the very great _favor_ of – of – the things that – well, _you_ know what it is you do to me, I certainly don’t have to tell you.”

“Certainly not.”

“The point is, you may have thought that an exclusivity clause in our little arrangement was superfluous because no one but you could possibly want to sleep with me, but in fact you have been proven entirely wrong, not for the first time, but I must say if we sort the list by the amount of satisfaction you being wrong provides me, this goes directly to the top of it.”

John grabbed him by the shoulder of his shirt and yanked him forward, cutting off his incipient noise of panic with a quick, hard kiss. “You’re so hot when you’re _satisfied_ ,” he said low in his throat.

“You’re jealous,” Rodney gasped, either from the kiss or from the force of revelation.

“Yeah.” John ran his hand down Rodney’s neck, underneath the collar of the shirt, and began to gather up the fabric in his hand, hitching it higher with an eye toward getting it off altogether.

“You just can’t stand,” Rodney said wonderingly, “that I got to him before you did.”

That stopped John for a second, and he cocked his eyebrows at Rodney. _Surprisingly_ oblivious, John’s sweet ass. “Mm,” he said after a moment. “Maybe that’s it exactly.”

He jerked Rodney up against him, and Rodney said, “John, I haven’t – I just finished – “

“Oh, I can see that.” He still smelled – alien. John leaned closer again and inhaled a non-Rodney mix of leather and something woodsy and something that might have been butterscotch, along with the smell of sweat and fucking, which was not so much new, but at the same time, it was new. Different. John licked up his neck, and Rodney shivered convulsively, as if his skin were still fiercely sensitized. There was a mark starting to form on his neck, too; John slid his mouth softly across it, and that tore a strangled sound out of Rodney that he fully expected to be followed by begging for mercy right...about....

“John, please, please, no.” Now. “This is – too – “

He ignored Rodney’s hands trying to press him away until they became too much of an annoyance, at which point he grabbed Rodney by the wrists and pushed his arms down to his sides. “I thought you didn’t want us to split up?”

“I know – no, I mean, I don’t, but – well – no, I don’t.” Rodney got his hands free and slid them up John’s arms. He tried to lower his head to get underneath John’s eye-level and wound up Athosian-hugging him, his breath warm and sugary-sweet on John’s face. “I owe you an apology,” he said quietly, and John hadn’t been so shocked since five minutes ago. An _apology_? Maybe the word meant something different in scientist. “I really like you, and I, I didn’t plan this. I wouldn’t. Have planned this, I mean, on the chance, on the off-chance that it would...hurt your – bother you? Maybe – I have no reason, really, to think it would bother you, I know this is hardly – what we’re doing together is.... Actually, I have literally no idea what we’re doing together, but I haven’t mistaken it for the romance of the ages, and yet on the other hand– “

“Rodney. Rodney, stop. You being all sensitive, it gives me the creeps. I don’t know that you owe me anything, but if it makes you feel better, fine, I accept your apology.” He slid his arms around Rodney’s waist and kissed him slowly and thoroughly, waiting until his body went lax and unresisting against John’s, breathing shallowly into the kiss and curling the fingers of both hands into the space just below the back of John’s neck.

He made an agonized sound as John pushed him down on the bed, and then made the same sound again, louder, when John knelt up over him with his thighs pressed firmly between Rodney’s legs. The smell that clung to everything – the bed, Rodney’s skin, Rodney’s tongue – was close to driving John past all thought, and he didn’t know if it was that it smelled so sharply, aggressively sexual, or that he was coming to associate the smell of a sweaty, aroused McKay, Pavlov-style, with an orgasm in his immediate future, or if it was that it smelled like Ronon – Ronon, who he’d been grappling with in the practice rooms for weeks now, and you’d think that getting thwacked in the head by a thick stick every time he was distracted by a flash of belly, a particular roll of his broad shoulders, a glint of boyish glee in his eyes – you’d definitely think that would make some kind of turned-on-by-Ronon equals ow-stop-hitting-me thing happen in his head, Pavlov-style, but not so far. More like an okay-hit-me-again-whatever-you-want-just-name-it thing, and this all had the potential to get very ugly and turn their team into one unhappy, incestuous family, but right now John couldn’t care about that, he could not at all give a good goddamn, because he had Rodney gasping and squirming and hard, presumably for the second time that night, underneath him -- Rodney who had just been in this very bed having _sex_ with _Ronon_.

“What are you – what are you doing?” Rodney asked, which was a stupid question, and if John had been on his game there would have been mockery, but actually it was nice to have Rodney gasping and squirming and _stupid_ underneath him.

“Reasserting my dubious claim on your person,” John said brightly. He’d managed words of four syllables _and_ the buttons on Rodney’s pants, and those accomplishments made him feel like a god of wit and coordination. He leaned forward to kiss Rodney again, letting the weight of his body press and grind between Rodney’s legs, and then growled beside his mouth, “You wanna be mine? I can _make_ you mine.”

“I _can’t_!” Rodney moaned, and he sounded like he was being tortured, but his face – God, John loved the way Rodney’s face looked in bed, like every single time it was the shock of his life how great it felt, like maybe he wouldn’t have been such a bastard his whole life if he’d only known he was capable of feeling this way. It wore off, of course, but it was a good look on him while it lasted. “No, John, you don’t understand, I _can’t_. You’ll – it’s too much, you’ll – I can’t, let me– “ He tried to press up on his elbows, his mouth blindly kissing whatever part of John’s face it came to. “Let me suck you,” he said in a rough, desperate tone that made the hair on the back of John’s arms stand up. “That’ll, I know you like that, I can – I like it, too. Let me....”

_Yes, sure, go right ahead_ seemed like the only logical answer, if the question was _What do you say when someone begs you to let him suck your dick?_ And yet something illogical seemed to be happening in John’s head (being around Rodney often made him want to do random and illogical things, just for the cute way that Rodney sputtered and called him demented and immature and evolutionarily misbegotten), because he heard himself say, “Nah. Rather fuck you through this mattress. Thanks, though. Rain check?”

Rodney’s fingers gripped his shoulders firmly, holding his attention even as he yanked Rodney’s pants down past his hips. “John,” he said seriously. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this twice in a row without actual physical damage. Please, if you love Beckett at all, spare him this infirmary visit, all right?”

John didn’t say anything. He knew he was supposed to say something, and yet there was nothing there, nothing he wanted to say, nothing he could.... His hand had come to a stop tucked against Rodney’s inner thigh, and he could feel the hair, the heat, the slick, smeared....

“I. I’d still like to.” Rodney’s grip on his shoulder turned into a gentling caress, a there-there gesture that began to sputter-start John’s brain up again with irritation. He didn’t need to be _patronized_ , for God’s sake. Rodney kissed him lightly and said, “Lie down, lie down. I meant it, I want to.”

“You let him _fuck_ you?” Ah, and there it went, all the lights back on and the power up, and John barreled ahead as if there’d been no interruption at all in his higher thought processes. “You don’t even let _me_ fuck you!”

“I have – I have no idea where you get that from.”

“You’re so full of shit, McKay.”

“I do let you! I have.”

“Hardly _ever_.” Three times, in fact. John remembered every one of them, because – well, because – it was Rodney McKay, and–

Fuck, for John it was nothing. It was one of a handful of self-destructive things he’d tried in his pissed-off, sulky youth, and only by accident did he discover that it wasn’t self-destructive at all, that in fact it helped him keep his balance, that it left him feeling relaxed and powerful and sexual and free – like any other orgasm, or maybe if anything more so. He’d never exactly taken it from a whole cafeteria full of servicemen or anything like that, but he’d spread his legs enough times in his life to make whatever deep, emotional freight it might have once carried with it seem a long way away.

Rodney was different. John wasn’t his biographer – was barely even his boyfriend – and he didn’t know the gory details of Rodney’s sexual history, but everything about that night they first switched places told John like an I Can Read book that it was a pretty damn big deal. The way he trembled, the way his eyelashes fluttered with his eyes closed, the way his muscles only unwound after John spent what felt like weeks slowly stroking Rodney’s back and arms and shoulders, the kiss he turned his head to give John, intent and motionless and pleading. And then, to feel him warm up and wake up in John’s arms, to start making those blissed-out little sounds and rocking back against his thrusts and finally to hear him answer John’s _this is good, this is good, come on, isn’t this good?_ with a breathless _okay, yes, good, oh, John, you’re good_.

Rodney had let him do it three times – once on the Daedelus on their way back home to Atlantis, once on that fucking miserable night when they’d found Kolya, lost the ZPM, and had two weeks left to live, and that first time, in the aftermath of the storm. That time when Rodney was weirdly quiet, his hand moving back and forth to brush against the stitches on his arm and then to touch the back of John’s hand as if checking to make sure he was still there while they necked for ages and then got naked and then laid there and didn’t talk to each other until Rodney said, _Look, you are going to stay the night, aren’t you?_ and John said, _Sure, absolutely, sorry to be so – you just don’t know how tired I am right now_ and Rodney said, _That tired? Because I was hoping, I thought I’d ask if you wanted to be on top? Because I understand you must be...tired, but that’s what I want right now, I really can’t even express how much I want you to...._ And then he couldn’t seem to quite say it, and John grinned and kissed him and he clenched his fingers in John’s hair and kissed back so hard it should have left bruises around their mouths, and then in the middle of it all, with Rodney so tense but trusting him so completely, he’d felt this power-surge of – protectiveness, or possessiveness, maybe. This sudden, unexpected surge of knowing Rodney and wanting Rodney and worrying about him and being grateful for him and proud of him, the same deep gut-twist of caring about someone’s well-being more than your own that John always felt about the men under his command, only to the power of ten and irreducible to anything he’d felt before.

And he didn’t need that all the time, didn’t mind it being a special-occasion deal, a whenever-it-seems-necessary deal, and the rest of the time just having Rodney around as his unpredictable, endlessly (if often unintentionally) amusing friend who also happened to be very hot for John and made it very worth John’s while to run with that pass.

He didn’t need that all the time, but he sure as hell couldn’t think of a single reason that Ronon Dex needed it _ever_.

“Don’t do that anymore,” he said shortly, leaving soft, nipping kisses along the underside of Rodney’s jaw. “I mean, I don’t care who you sleep with, that’s your business– “

“It’s all right if you don’t want me to, I don’t mind, you and I could– “

“No,” he said quickly. “We’re friends, right?”

“Well...yes, I consider you a friend....”

“Good. So as your friend, I’ll be the first one to congratulate you for bagging the hottest piece of ass in the colony. But don’t do it like that. Don’t bottom for anyone else, okay?”

Rodney’s thumb ran heavy and slow down the side of his neck, and as he stared up at John the wheels were turning almost visibly in his mind as he worked furiously on the complicated equation that John clearly represented to him. “As what?” he finally asked.

“What?”

“Well, as my _friend_ , you’re simply thrilled to pieces that I slept with someone else. So as my _what_ , exactly, are you willing to interfere with my private life?”

“Now you’re just being difficult.”

“No, I’d really like to understand the parameters of our little ‘relationship,’ here. Because I did have a rather _fantastic_ time tonight, and should the opportunity arise again, I need some sense of exactly why it is that I’m expected to– “

“Because it’s personal, okay? It’s personal, it’s intimate, it’s– You barely even know the guy!”

“You’d roll over on your back for him in a heartbeat! The whole city can see that!”

“It’s totally different!”

“God, you’re self-centered. It’s different because it’s _you_?”

“You and I are _different_ , Rodney. You may not want to hear me say that, but we are. Things that mean something to you don’t mean much of anything to me.”

For a second, he looked like he was about to say something sharp back. Then he got quiet and his eyes slid away, his head lolling slightly to the side on his pillow so that he was looking pensively at the wall. “I see,” he said at last, not nearly sharply enough for John’s comfort. “That’s a, ah, viable theory. You might be right about that.”

“Rodney....” He wasn’t sure exactly what to say, though. It was the truth, he’d told the _truth_ , and John wasn’t in the habit of lying to his friends. Of course, he wasn’t in the habit of making his friends look like they were bleeding out on the curb, either.

Rodney put up his hand to John’s lips to shush him, and then slowly rolled him over to his back. “Rodney,” John said again as Rodney pulled his shirt off of him and then leaned down to kiss the middle of his chest, toying with John’s right nipple as he did.

“Oh, God, aren’t we done with the talking parts yet?” Rodney said, and every muscle in John’s body relaxed at the familiar tone in his voice, all ruffled feathers and crisp impatience. This was better, this was solid ground. “Shut up and take your blowjob like a man, will you?”

_I know you like that_ he’d said, as if it were some personal quirk of John’s. Surely to be able to give blowjobs like Rodney did, he must have practiced on enough men to have noticed the flaws in that, but in any case the fact did remain that, yes, John liked that very much. He liked the way Rodney kissed his stomach while they both twisted and stretched trying to get John’s sweatpants off of him, and the loose, tantalizing way he curled his hand around the base of John’s cock once they did. He liked the way Rodney always focused on the head where the best nerve-endings were, sucking and licking with wet lips and a firm, quick tongue, rather than trying to copy some move out of a bad porno and jam it directly down his throat. He liked the way it seemed casual, almost forgetful, when Rodney’s fingers strayed back to rub around the base of his balls, like maybe he wasn’t trying to do anything for John, but just liked to play around with John’s balls while he gave head. He liked – oh, God, he liked _everything_ about this, and by the time Rodney had a hand braced against the mattress just inside John’s leg and was working his cock deeper and deeper into his mouth with grim, half-lidded determination in his eyes, John was gasping for air and pressing his palms flat on the wall behind him to hold his body taut and steady.

“Yeah, shit, _shit_ ,” he gasped, his hips twitching just a tiny bit before he could get control of them again. “Fuck – baby – fucking great, don’t stop, don’t stop.”

He must have been moving around more than he realized, because Rodney suddenly pulled off just enough to readjust and gripped John’s hips hard between both his hands, shooting one _shut up and be careful_ look up at John before sinking back down, hot wet sweet sucking. John bit his lip hard and threw his head back, panting noisily and staring at the ceiling. God – Rodney – _fuck_ , it was only John’s deep and altruistic sense of duty to the mission that kept him from locking Rodney in a secret room in some unexplored part of the city and keeping him there as John’s permanent sex-slave.

Rodney stopped long enough to run his tongue in one flat, sleek stripe up the inside of John’s thigh, and just when the combination of stopping-bad! and licking-good! was about to make John lose his last remaining logical synapse in a fiery blaze, he bit the soft skin of John’s stomach. John’s hips lurched up convulsively, blocked by the weight of Rodney over him, and that slippery fabric that Rodney’s shirt was made out of, like nylon only infinitely nicer, felt even better than usual as his dick pressed up against Rodney’s shoulder.

“I do love this,” Rodney mumbled against his stomach as John thrust up, the niceness of the super-nylon not exactly an acceptable substitute for the heat and pressure of Rodney’s mouth. One hand traced the curve of John’s body from ribs to hip, a light, shivery touch, and he said, “You’re so responsive. It really feels like you want....”

“I do,” John panted. “I want you, I want you, c’mon, Rodney, I want your mouth.”

Rodney licked the underside of his cock and then said, crisp and hoarse and a bit distant all at once, “I think that’ll do, that’s close enough,” then took John back into his mouth and made him scream.

He laid on his side and watched as John recovered himself, then sat up slowly and pretended lying flat like that didn’t make his back tighten up in a way it never used to do. John glanced over his shoulder as he stood up, pulling on his sweatpants. Rodney was flushed, with his hair standing up everywhere and his mouth looking dark and swollen, and for a moment John came to a dead stop, imagining Ronon lying there in bed beside him (in imagination, Rodney’s bed was at least a full size larger than the real version was), naked and sheened with sweat and utterly relaxed by the previously unsuspected eroticism of one of Rodney’s blowjobs. John started to rewind that mental videotape to get to the parts he’d missed, and then abruptly shook himself off.

Rodney was smiling at him slightly, almost but not quite a smirk. “Are you all right, Colonel?”

“Mm. I’ll recover, I think.” John grinned back at him, and then on impulse leaned over and put one hand on Rodney’s waist, brushing a faint kiss across his mouth. “You better hope Ronon keeps secrets as well as I do, or you’ll have the worst reputation in Atlantis.”

“Well,” he said breezily, folding his hands behind his head, “now that I know for sure that I’m a thoroughly eligible bachelor, I suppose that could work to my advantage.”

Something about that didn’t sit entirely right with John; the idea of McKay singles-scening it through the galaxy – it just didn’t seem to fit Rodney somehow. Luckily, John had seen him fall on his face enough times with the pre-sex, meet-and-mingle phases of romantic entanglements that he didn’t expect he’d need to worry about Rodney donning a smoking jacket and racking up conquests any time soon. Pegasus Galaxy’s loss and John’s gain.

“I’m going to be jerking off for the rest of my _life_ to the picture of the two of you. You know that, right?”

Rodney smiled again, no snap to it at all, just a broad, relaxed, pleased smile. “They say there’s no accounting for taste, but I suppose I have no choice but to feel flattered.”

“I hate to run off, but I committed myself to doing surprise inspections on the Gateroom third shift tonight. This is the part of commanding that’s no fun at all, being the exact same officious tight-ass that you hated when you were rank-and-file.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“I’m not making excuses, I was just telling you about my day. Look, after the officious tight-ass part, there’s a whole bunch of paperwork, but if you want after that, I could come back– “

“It’s not necessary. You’d only wake me up.”

“Really, are you sure?” John waggled his eyebrows in a manner he hoped was suggestive, but feared was suggestive of not much more than a Groucho Marx impersonator. “You’re sure I wouldn’t just be interrupting your hot, naked liaison with – who? – Zelenka?”

“ _Zelenka_? I will now be forever unsettled by the suspicion that deep down you harbor inappropriate yearnings for – _Zelenka_?”

“You don’t think he’s cute? He has that little accent....”

“Colonel, for the love of God, stop talking.”

Once he had his shirt on, John bent down for another quick kiss, but Rodney wrapped both hands around the back of his head, and suddenly it was a long kiss, long and wet and warm, Rodney’s mouth moving like slow surf-waves underneath his. “John,” he said in a small, throaty voice when their lips finally moved apart, “you should know....”

“What?” he breathed back.

“It’s very difficult, not to make this – mean anything to me. I am trying. I can try harder, even. It’s just that – if we’re friends, you should trust me, and I should tell you the truth, so the truth is....”

“Rodney, are you out of your mind? I didn’t mean _me_. I mean, when I said that, about – meaning something and not meaning something – all that, I wasn’t talking about _us_. Fuck, is that what you thought?”

“Well. I just thought– “

“Well, stop! Stop thinking that! God, you suck at relationships.”

“I do, yes. I only – well, you were so damn adamant about both of us being free to – that I thought you didn’t want me to get very...attached to you.”

John straightened up and ran his hands through his hair with a frustrated sigh. He wasn’t sure why he’d ever thought things would be simple with Rodney; every point they had in their favor, what with the whole being close friends and already accustomed to trusting each other with their lives, was cancelled out by at least two points docked off any relationship that Rodney had anything to do with. “Rodney, look. Look, I just – I want you to be happy, okay? We’re out here, we have all these connections being formed from the adversity and the teamwork and that kind of crap, we’re going nuts with the overproduction of adrenaline, none of us know when – how long we’re going to last. I like you. I like all this that we do together, all of it. I just think that one extra thing we don’t need hanging over our heads is some kind of fear that one of us is going to let the other one down, or get disappointed or hurt or jealous or whatever. We’ve got plenty of shit to deal with, and plenty of shit is guaranteed to go down and give us a really bad day on any morning that we get out of bed at all. All I want is for you and me to be, God, let’s just say, _not_ the thing that causes a really bad day for each other. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“I...think so, yes.”

He reached down and brushed one finger lightly over Rodney’s cheek, and Rodney’s eyes widened slightly at the unexpectedness of the gesture. His hand came up, his palm across John’s, holding the back of John’s hand against his face. “Don’t ever think I’m not your friend, don’t ever think I don’t trust you with everything I have. You obviously have no idea just how much having you here matters to me. If that’s my fault, I’m sorry. I kind of suck at relationships, too.”

“I’m not angry.” Rodney let his hand slip away and gave him an encouraging little smile. “Go, you have things to do. Grunts to terrify.”

“I should find out how you do it.”

“There’s no trick. I just call people names.”

“That really works?”

“I know, you wouldn’t think so, would you? Scientists can be so sensitive.”

In the doorway, John turned around one last time and looked at Rodney, still lolling sleepily in his disreputable bed. He shook his head, half affectionate and half impressed – Rodney McKay, slut-genius of Atlantis; he wondered if Ronon had walked out of here feeling as buzzed with pleasure and foolish sentiment as John was. “Hey,” he said.

“Hm?” Rodney said, turning his face in John’s direction.

“What you asked before, about who I am? You know, as a friend this, but as what am I asking...?”

“I remember.”

“If I said as your – if I said I was asking as your lover, would you – take that amiss, somehow?”

Rodney seemed to think that over for a minute. “I’m not sure I can answer that. What do you mean by ‘take it amiss’?”

Awkwardly, John shrugged. “Just, anything. Get mad or get scared off or, I don’t know, sprout some kind of misguided sense of loyalty that would prevent you from having another fling with Ronon and inviting me to watch?”

He grinned and turned his face back up to the ceiling. “Don’t you have a job of some kind?”

“Are you kicking me out?”

“ _Goodnight_ , John.”

“G’night.”

He failed entirely to terrify his grunts that night. It was probably the smile.


	2. Contraband

“What?” McKay said when he opened the door, and Ronon blinked. He’d knocked, hadn’t he? McKay had answered, hadn’t he? Ronon knew he was fairly rusty with communal living, but certainly where he came from, if someone knocked and you didn’t want to see them, you didn’t have to yell. You just didn’t open the door.

“ _What_?” McKay said again. “What, what, what? Short for: _what do you want_?”

If they were going to be direct, that was fine. That was fine. Life was short, so get to it, Ronon could appreciate that philosophy. “Food.” McKay stared at him. Maybe he thought Ronon only meant that in the larger scheme of things. What do you want? Food, shelter, ammunition, some fragile thread of hope for the future, food. True enough, but not the point of this visit. “I heard you had food in here.”

McKay narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Where did you hear that?”

“Lots of places. Doesn’t matter. Is it true?”

“We just came from dinner, not two hours ago.”

Ronon shrugged. He’d given part of his to a girl in a uniform with a dislocated shoulder who hadn’t been able to pile much on her tray without making it impossible to carry one-handed. He’d watched her refuse three offers for help, but she still looked hungry when she was done, and she was skinny, too, so Ronon doubted she could spare the calories. Ronon had gone hungry plenty of nights, and anyway he didn’t really like the strongly acidic, blood-red sauce that came on a lot of the food here. He passed his noodles and sauce to her, and she almost objected to his help, too, but then she looked at him for a minute, turned a bit pink, and thanked him. “Not the red stuff,” he said. “Different food.”

“ _Oh_ , I _see_. I’m sorry that the menu wasn’t to your liking, but our shipment of fresh Maine lobster has been unaccountably delayed, and anyway, aren’t roots and berries your typical fare? I would think anything would be an improvement on– Wait, you don’t like the _spaghetti_? Who doesn’t like spaghetti?”

“Me, I guess.”

That didn’t seem to leave McKay much to find fault with. He huffed for a moment, and then calmed down. Ronon waited. “Well, you heard wrong,” he finally said. “Regulations require all food items except powerbars to be stored centrally and disbursed through the commissary agent.” Ronon raised his eyebrow and waited. “Oh, fine,” McKay said, throwing up his hand and moving out of the doorway. “This one time, and you might as well not tell anyone, because they’ll never take your word over mine.”

“McKay. I heard it lots of places. Everyone knows.”

“I don’t care. I’m not interested in running a speakeasy out of my quarters; I’m only doing this for you because.... Because you’re on my team.” Ronon nodded. That was sensible enough; what they called “away teams” here were obviously nothing more than slightly smaller strike-squadrons, and even McKay wasn’t difficult enough, or crazy enough, not to look out for his own strike-squadron.

In addition to food, McKay had a flat device in his quarters with a heating coil on it that he plugged into one of the power-conversion strips that all the aliens used to make their homeworld technology compatible with the Atlantis infrastructure. “Don’t mention this, either,” he said offhandedly as he ran some water into a pot and set it on the dish. “I had to confiscate it from engineering – entirely against regulations. It really wasn’t fair of them to open the entire department up to possible disciplinary action. It’s important that people learn to keep their nefarious doings in private. That’s just common courtesy.”

The water was taking a while to boil, and McKay was blaming engineering for something else now, something Ronon didn’t really care about, so he decided to look around. If he were McKay, where would he keep an emergency powerbar? By the bed.

Right. A whole drawer full of nothing but different kinds of powerbars, charging plates for portable devices, and a bottle of some kind of...grooming product? That seemed more like something Sheppard would keep around than McKay, although perhaps it did belong to Colonel Sheppard – the fact that he slept here regularly was an even more widely publicized secret than McKay’s hoarded food. Ronon sniffed it curiously, but it didn’t smell like Sheppard’s hair; he would have recognized that smell. He kind of liked it.

“Give me that!” McKay demanded in an outraged squeak, grabbing at the bottle from Ronon’s hand. Instinctively, Ronon pulled it away protectively. “What’s the _matter_ with you? You can’t just go through people’s things!”

McKay was turning pink himself, his hands jittering in that way they sometimes did when he wanted to run away but couldn’t. It puzzled Ronon for a second, and then he felt stupid. Of course nobody kept hair things by the bed. They kept sex things by the bed. If it hadn’t been like another lifetime since Ronon had been used to having a bed, having sex, or actually having things at all, he wouldn’t have been so thickheaded. “Sorry,” he said, and put the lubricant back in the drawer. He couldn’t help grinning over his shoulder at McKay, all flustered and irritated, and saying, “You shouldn’t be embarrassed.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t? Well, since what you know about local custom could be written on the head of a pin, I don’t think– “

“I know if I had Sheppard coming around here every night, I’d be keeping twenty bottles of lube and one powerbar, not the other way around.”

That brought McKay to a dead standstill, gaping at him in shock. Ronon smiled again. He was funny, this Dr. McKay who wasn’t even a real doctor. He always thought he knew what everyone was going to say next, and he hardly ever guessed right. “I don’t have.... I mean...why would you think that – Colonel Sheppard – ?”

“Why would you think that nobody around here would ever notice?”

McKay’s mouth twisted up in a way that surprised Ronon, a bitter sort of anger rather than his usual flash-fire temper. “Most people around here know enough not to say it out loud. You don’t understand, the Colonel could lose his job. He could get sent home for this.”

Ronon cocked his head to the side. “You have regulations here against food _and_ sex?”

“Not here so much as there. Where J– the Colonel is from. It’s military law, and I’m sure Elizabeth would be happy to disregard it, but if Caldwell were to file a report, he could be dishonorably discharged.”

“Stripped of his rank?”

“ _Kicked out_. All right? So don’t say things like that. Just get in the habit of pretending along with the rest of us.”

“Sorry.” After a minute of weighing the benefits and drawbacks of prolonging a conversation that was clearly making McKay angry and sad, Ronon decided it would be good for morale if they bonded over this. “There’s a rule – or, there was a rule – back home against fraternization between members of the same strike-squadron. It violates unity. Fights start. Everyone is supposed to be equals – except the taskmaster, obviously – so you. Can’t. Sometimes that’s a hard rule to follow, when you’re with seven other people that you feel very close to.”

McKay gave him a long look and nodded carefully. “Did you...ever break that rule?”

The first memory that came to mind was sweet, so Ronon smiled. Even the wake of bad memories that followed after couldn’t entirely spoil the effect. “No, not me. I had Kel, didn’t want anyone else.”

As if he didn’t really want to do it, McKay smiled back. “You had a – wife?”

That made him laugh out loud, one quick bark that startled McKay back a step. Kel, his _wife_. What wasn’t funny about _that_? “Kel was our taskmaster.”

“Wait, wait. You were allowed to sleep with your _superior_?”

“Sure.” Why not? That wasn’t complicated, like the other things. That was simple. It was an honor to be chosen, an honor that Ronon wore with a distinct lack of humility back then. It makes him a little sick, now, to realize what kind of a man Kel was, and how blind Ronon had been to everything but having his favor, being known as the one who tended Kel. What if he had watched more carefully, seen more, been more prepared? What if, somehow, he could have warned someone, everyone? Kel being his taskmaster, that made it too easy. Kel being Kel, that’s what made things get complicated.

He spent the first three years angry because no one had stopped Kel. He’d spent every year since then living with the knowledge that no one but him could have.

McKay shook his head. “I can’t wrap my head around these things. People say anthropology is a science, but it isn’t. It’s all witch-doctoring and throwing the bones as far as I’m concerned.”

“What is this?” Ronon asked, picking up the picture off the top of the stand. It looked like the largest chipmunk he’d ever seen, sort of.

“That’s – put that down! Honestly, you’re five years old!” McKay grabbed it away from him and set it up again carefully. “That’s my cat. You don’t have cats on your planet?”

“Seen them. Fought them. That doesn’t look like one.”

“He’s not that kind of cat. Domesticated – small and harmless. We keep them as pets. You have pets, don’t you?”

“I had a pig when I was a boy.”

“Yes, marvelous, exactly like that,” McKay said, sounding annoyed. “A boy and his pig. It’s touching. Do you want dinner or not?”

“You have a picture of your pet, but no humans.”

“I like my pet.” His tone discouraged further questions. And besides, there was food.

He was disappointed by the preparation process, though. There were noodles in a box, and a foil packet full of seasoning. It looked depressingly like an MRE, and somehow he’d expected more from McKay. Something more...forbidden.

Instead of red, the sauce was yellow – brilliantly, glaringly golden-yellow. Ronon eyed the bowl dubiously as McKay put it in his hands, and McKay rolled his eyes and said, “Who knew you were such a gourmand? Just try it, will you?”

The spices weren’t really spices at all. They’d combined with the boiling water to produce a sauce, the richest, creamiest, butter-cheese sauce Ronon had ever tasted. As soon as the first spoonful was in his mouth, his eyes closed and he made a small, startled noise in his chest. It was _good_ – salty and slick and strong. It burned his tongue and he didn’t care. He made another noise of approval and started to rake it from the bowl to his mouth as fast as he could.

McKay snorted. “Up to your standards, I take it.”

“Never had anything like this,” he managed with his mouth full. “What is it called?”

“It’s a Kraft Dinner. I lived on these when I was young. My parents weren’t much for cooking, but they could be counted upon to buy many boxes of Kraft Dinner every week so that my sister and I didn’t starve to death. I suppose I’m grateful to them for that.”

“I would eat this _every day_.”

“There was a time when I did. And I thought I’d never want to taste it again once I was out of the house and on my own, but strangely...I find it comforting now. So simple, so reliable. You always know you can take care of yourself, as long as you can put dinner on the table.”

Ronon understood that. He nodded and lifted the bowl to his face, trying to lick the sauce off the sides. When he raised his head, McKay was smirking at him. “Here,” he said, “you have some....” He touched his lip to demonstrate, and Ronon licked the equivalent spot on his own lip. “Do you need a drink? I have– You should try this.”

Unsurprisingly, McKay had a refrigeration unit in his closet, and he brought out a plastic bottle with something frighteningly purple inside. Why did all the food of Earth come in such unlikely colors? Ronon expected it to be like the frothing drink that the cafeteria doled out sparingly and to much excitement – not beer -- the other, sweet kind that everyone seemed to call by a different name. It had the same fizz to it, that tickled the back of your nose if you drank it too fast, and it was sweet, but _sweeter_ , shockingly sweet, with a stronger flavor to it. Ronon drank the first few sips cautiously, the combined sharp airiness of the froth and the syrupy heaviness of the flavoring almost too much to handle. But then he decided he liked it, too. Very much.

“McKay,” he announced, “I like you. You can keep breaking all the regulations you want. If anyone tries to stop you, just send them to me.”

“Great, my speakeasy has a bouncer. All I need is a torch singer and I can quit physics and go into the restaurant business full-time.” There was something funny about McKay, though – not the usual way he struck Ronon as funny when he used that sarcastic voice, but _funny_. He was still pinkish – maybe when Ronon brought up regulations, he’d made McKay think of the situation with Sheppard again?

He picked up the bowl again and ran his finger along the bottom, trying to wipe up the last buttery streaks of cheese sauce from the bottom, wondering exactly how many more boxes of Kraft Dinner McKay had hidden in this room.

He happened to glance up as he put the tip of his finger in his mouth to suck off the cheese, and finally he recognized that expression. He wasn’t used to seeing it on McKay’s face, but he’d seen it plenty of other places in the last few weeks. The glassy, widened eyes, the flush, the lips just slightly parted. He looked like that girl with the sling on her arm at dinner, like that scientist he’d had to dance clumsily around when she tried to get into the same transporter he was coming out of, like Sheppard the time that Ronon had given him a hand up off the practice mats and pulled him too abruptly so that he smacked up against Ronon and then jumped back like he’d been burnt.

Maybe it was because everyone in Atlantis was so short. Maybe it was just because he’d filled out a lot since he was nineteen. He thought it should excite him more, the way that every second person he’d met here seemed perfectly willing to go to bed with him. Why didn’t it excite him more?

Maybe he was just tired of being chased.

Still. McKay. That was unexpected enough to be kind of intriguing. He wasn’t as pretty as Sheppard or the elevator woman, but he did make Ronon laugh. And he had – a sweetness to him, a certain no-quarter-asked-and-none-given loyalty that Ronon admired, particularly in someone who was, for all intents and purposes, still a new recruit rather than a soldier born and bred. And he seemed to break regulations with a certain amount of devious glee, which.... Ronon had spent his entire life trying to adhere to every rule, to be the best at every task, a model soldier. He regretted that now. He regretted a lot of things. He wished he’d been...a little more like this, like the kind of man who would let nothing and no one forbid him from having – lube and purple soda-pop. A little more...dangerous.

“You’re under different regulations. Different from Colonel Sheppard, I mean,” he said, letting his voice drift a little lower. He’d always had a voice that people responded well to, even when he was nineteen and gangly and uptight.

“I’m a civilian. I’m under all the regulations of Atlantis, but not of the United States Air Force. Although it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that for the civilian population, ‘all the regulations of Atlantis’ essentially means whatever Elizabeth needs it to mean. It’s really no way to run a government, but I have to confess I’ve always had an antiauthoritarian, if not out-and-out anarchistic, streak in me, so it’s not too– “

“I haven’t had sex since I came to this city. Or for a long time before that.”

McKay hesitated only a beat. “Really? That’s surprising. I mean, I find that surprising. Not the last part, which I would have expected, had I been thinking about it, and I really hadn’t been – thinking about it – but the first part, that surprises me. Because you’re – reasonably attractive, and better yet you’re new, we don’t get many new people here, and not to suggest you’re habitually guided by your – hormones, but I would simply have imagined that a man in your position – that is, after the first few good meals and a very long, very hot shower, I would think one of the things you’d do....”

“Yeah. It’s one of the things I thought I’d do, too. When I was running, when I would imagine what it’d be like to escape.” He wasn’t sure how to explain that after so many years alone, so many years in the silence of your own thoughts, paranoid about anyone around you, for your sake and for theirs – that it wasn’t as easy as you might imagine to be...near somebody again. Everyone around Ronon felt as if they were pressing in on him, standing too close, following him. It was starting to wear off now, a little. For a while, it had been...terrible. He’d wondered if the Wraith had broken something in him forever, if he was going to be permanently unfit for human company.

Ronon let his eyes drift half-shut and imagined standing up, leaning across the empty space toward McKay’s chair, close enough to feel the heat of him. He imagined listening to their quick breathing in distinct rhythms, watching McKay shift nervously and tilt his head up. He imagined–

Yes. He thought he could kiss McKay. McKay was a member of his strike-squad, but– But, no, he wasn’t. This was not Sateda; this was Atlantis. There was no rule against this, not now. And even if there was, who said he wanted to go back to being the old Specialist Ronon Dex, with all of his commendations and all of his fears?

“Dessert!” McKay said suddenly, too loudly. It startled Ronon’s eyes open, and he saw McKay returning to the drawer by his bed. “I have this, you’ll like this,” he was saying, almost as if the words didn’t particularly mean anything to him, but he needed to fill the silence.

Ronon stood up and followed him.

McKay turned around again with a powerbar in his hand and made a whimpery noise to find Ronon only a few fingers’ width away. “Don’t be scared,” Ronon said, dropping his voice as low as he could in pitch and volume. He grinned, thinking it for the first time, and then decided to say it out loud: “I should be the one who’s scared. Maybe I won’t even remember how.”

“You know – you know I’ve been seeing Colonel Sheppard.”

His smile widened and he nodded his head in deference to that. “All I’m doing is knocking on the door, McKay. You can answer it or not.”

“Here,” McKay said, holding up the powerbar. “I really want you to try this.”

“Why?”

McKay ducked his head self-consciously. “You’re very – you have this look when you’re enjoying your food.”

His fingers shook slightly, but Ronon didn’t offer to help him unwrap the bar, which didn’t really seem to be a powerbar at all. The wrapper was bright yellow, but Ronon was relieved to see that the food itself was an inoffensive brown. McKay broke it in half and held half of it up to Ronon, who took a bite.

It wasn’t like anything. It wasn’t like _anything_. Ronon moaned as it melted into a pool of rich chocolate, like the cakes and puddings in the cafeteria, only more intensely concentrated, and – something else – in his mouth. “What is this?”

“Hm?” McKay said. “Hm, oh, candy bar. Butterfinger.”

Ronon nodded quickly and leaned in for another bite. He couldn’t open his eyes. He’d forgotten all about sex. He’d forgotten everything, except the taste.

The feeling of McKay’s fingers against his lips reminded him as they fed Ronon the last bite of that half. His eyes flickered open and focused slowly on McKay. “Still knocking?” McKay said. Ronon nodded, and he moved his wrist, flattening his palm out on the side of Ronon’s face. McKay nodded once in return, and Ronon leaned down and kissed him.

McKay made a soft sound into his mouth and brought his hands up, one of them still holding the other wrapped half of the candy bar, to the back of Ronon’s neck, making him shiver. He’d always been sensitive on the back of his neck. He settled his hands on McKay’s back and thought about kissing. So many years – so many years alone, and now this place where he could have anything, the most amazing, unimagined pleasures that any world could provide, men and women, food and good work and his own quarters with a hot shower to come home to. How could he have come from _that_ to _this_ , from nothing to everything?

It could have been just because it’d been so long, but he was pretty sure that McKay was a good kisser.

He pulled the zipper down on McKay’s shirt and slid his hands inside, letting his thumbs graze McKay’s nipples. “Tell me what you want me to do,” he murmured as McKay twisted one hand into his hair and kissed his neck. “Tell me what to do....”

McKay shivered and pressed closer to him, sliding his hands inside Ronon’s sweater and up his sides. “God, I don’t even care. Just be naked while you’re doing it, all right?”

Being naked felt strange. He’d been sleeping half-dressed in Atlantis, which felt like a happy change from fully dressed; other than getting into and out of the shower, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken off all his clothes at once. His hands moved to his necklaces and hesitated for just a moment before he slipped them all off as well. McKay sat on the edge of his bed and watched him, silent and intent.

He didn’t say anything even when Ronon was finished with the relatively simply job of taking off all his clothes. “Like this?” Ronon finally said.

McKay cleared his throat twice before he could speak. “Yes, like – like that. That’s – good.”

Ronon smiled slightly. “Are we going to kiss some more? Or is this what– Do you like to watch?” He moved his hand to his cock and gave it an experimental stroke, keeping his eyes on McKay.

McKay let him complete two strokes before reaching out, one hand gripping Ronon’s thigh and the other resting on his stomach, just over his hip. “Kissing?” Ronon tried again hopefully. McKay tugged just enough to indicate that the time for kissing had come around again, and Ronon pushed him down to the bed underneath him and tasted his mouth.

Definitely a good kisser. Ronon rested his elbows on either side of McKay’s head and closed his eyes while they kissed, letting McKay wind his hands up in his hair. For a while it was perfect, and then he started to wish that McKay were naked, too.

While he was pulling McKay’s clothes off of him, he noticed the other half of the candy bar that had fallen out of McKay’s hand on the mattress. Ronon reached out and slid it closer. “You want this?” he asked. McKay groaned and shook his head, shifting his cock up against Ronon’s hip. “Can I eat it?”

McKay laughed. “Yes – God, please do.” He fed it to Ronon bite by bite, and when the candy was gone, Ronon licked the melted chocolate off McKay’s fingertips. Even when there was no more chocolate, he kept running his tongue over McKay’s fingers and across his broad palm and down the sensitive skin inside his wrist. When they kissed again, Ronon imagined that McKay was tasting the sweetness with his tongue as he ran it over the inside of Ronon’s lips.

He must have been a little disoriented when McKay pressed something into his hand, because all he could think was that he was sorry it wasn’t more candy. When he finally realized it was McKay’s bottle of lube, that didn’t seem so disappointing. “What should I do?” he murmured through kisses.

“I think you should fuck me,” McKay whispered, sliding his fingers slowly down Ronon’s back. 

I’m not sure I can, Ronon thought about saying. The offer sounded good, but it also sounded like it required moving from right here, right where he was pressed against another warm body, feeling McKay’s breath, his quivering, his hot erection against Ronon’s skin.

But then, if you couldn’t do a favor for the man who’d given you a whole box of his Kraft Dinner....

Once he’d made the decision, it turned out not to be as difficult as all that. Moving was fun, actually; the noises McKay made when Ronon flipped him over were even more fun. He kept squirming around while Ronon was trying to work his slick fingers inside him – tight, Ronon didn’t remember how _tight_ – until he finally slid half off the bed. Ronon didn’t mind that, either, really. He was having sex for the first time in around seven years, so it would have taken a greater inconvenience than being on his knees on McKay’s carpeting to bother him much. He used his own weight to hold McKay against the edge of the mattress while he finished with the lube on his fingers and fitted his thighs firmly between McKay’s parted legs. He nipped briefly at the back of McKay’s neck as he pressed slowly inside, but it didn’t seem like McKay was as sensitive there, so he let his mouth linger at the joint of his shoulder and neck instead, and that made him drop his head forward and moan.

It took longer than Ronon would have expected to work his cock all the way into McKay. Not that he was complaining. The anticipation, the slow, boiling build of pleasure– Well, for a very long time, Ronon had believed he was living with no time left for a moment of rest, let alone something long and slow and selfishly exciting. He could do this all night, just to revel in having all night to test McKay’s body, to explore it, to play every note he could find. 

McKay did not seem to feel the same way. “Faster,” he croaked, digging his fingers into the sheets and pulling at them while Ronon rocked into him, reveling in a sensation that had become nearly as new to him as Butterfinger bars. Sex – he _liked_ sex. He could do this every day....

“Faster, dammit, come on!” McKay yelled at him in the same tone he used for yelling at his scientists whenever Ronon wandered through the lab. Ronon liked that. He was liking a lot of things about McKay lately, and that might not be good news. He didn’t think McKay liked him very much; McKay thought he was stupid, and maybe he was right. Ronon had never been the one who needed to invent strategies and give orders, no one had ever expected.... But McKay seemed to expect everyone to be good at thinking things through, and frustrated by people like Ronon, who kept failing over and over again.

Ronon thrust in harder, faster. He took orders, he’d always been good at taking orders, and he respected men like McKay, who always had a plan. He was being used, here – for his strength, for the size of his cock and the smoothness of his skin, for his convenient availability, or for something, something else Ronon didn’t understand or need to understand – but he didn’t mind that. Ronon liked being useful. “Like this?” he said into McKay’s ear. “Fast enough?”

McKay moaned and lowered his head all the way down, scrubbing his forehead hard against the sheets for a moment as if to wipe something out of his brain from the outside. “Good, fine – fuck!” he said, his voice muffled by the mattress. His hand moved backwards, seeking blindly until he got a good grip on Ronon’s thigh and dug in with his fingers almost painfully. McKay had surprisingly strong hands. He could probably work the repeating slide on a core-cannon, if he could lift its weight – maybe Ronon could put together some kind of harness to hold it against his body – make it hard to run, but maybe McKay didn’t need to–

Ronon laughed suddenly, and McKay said, “What?” in a suspicious voice.

“I was just thinking about guns. That seemed funny to me.”

“Actually, I’m not sure it surprises me at all. You military types – have trouble distinguishing – between your guns and – never mind, just – quit thinking and keep doing the rest of it.”

“Yes, sir,” Ronon said dryly.

Good. Almost – just – perfect, the pressure, the hot, slippery resistance, the intense physicality of feeling McKay’s entire body against the length of his as they leaned together over the edge of the bed. He couldn’t stop sucking on McKay’s shoulder and the side of his neck, and his own breathing was becoming as noisy as McKay’s, hissing hard through his gritted teeth. He kept one hand wrapped around McKay’s hipbone and stretched forward, his other hand rubbing down McKay’s outstretched arm until his hand covered the back of McKay’s hand, fisted in the sheets. He nudged McKay’s head to the side with his own forehead for better access to his neck, which smelled salt-sweaty and a little bit like sharp marine vegetation and warm butter – the smell of Dr. McKay. Ronon had been given little choice but to grow very sensitive to fine distinctions of scent, and the skill had been helpful in getting his bearings when he came to Atlantis; all these strangers were less frightening when he realized he could stand in a room with his eyes closed and separate them all by the unique smell of them. That made him feel more capable, less defenseless. He’d always liked the smell of McKay.

McKay was doing more than surrendering to it now; now he was pushing back hard, panting for air. _Now you don’t care if I’m stupid or not_ , Ronon thought with idle satisfaction, and then he wasn’t sure why he’d thought it. Being around McKay was confusing sometimes. Sheppard was clearly a strong man, to be able to keep his balance through it.

There was no warning; for what felt like a long time, he’d been happy re-acquiring this particular taste, soaking himself in the feel and the sound and the smell of his own arousal combining with McKay’s, and then all of a sudden he was as hungry as he’d ever been in his life. He clenched his hand around McKay’s and closed his eyes, trying desperately – all night, he hadn’t even wanted to think about stopping – too much now, too good and not good enough – he couldn’t last long now and didn’t want to. He wanted to come. _Now_.

McKay was making noises almost constantly now; Ronon couldn’t tell and didn’t care if they were meant to be speech or not. He heard his name somewhere in there – Ronon, his family name, they were all so formal here, always used each other’s family names and ranks even within the strike-squad, even when they were naked and chasing each other headlong toward the final moments. “Dex,” he said low in McKay’s ear. Rodney’s ear. Shouldn’t it be that way – companions, equals, sharing their food with each other, watching each other’s backs, knowing each other by name?

His whole spine seemed to yank backwards with the force of his orgasm, and Ronon put one hand behind himself for balance, using the one on Rodney’s hip to pull him backwards too, his legs spread around Ronon’s as he leaned helplessly back against Ronon’s chest. Ronon ran a hand down over his heaving chest and his soft, tender belly, but he had barely brushed Rodney’s cock with the side of his finger when Rodney came, crying out. Ronon nuzzled the sweat off his temple while his breathing slowly settled down and he grew heavier and heavier, half on top of Ronon.

“You have – no idea – how badly I needed that,” Rodney said the moment he could speak, his voice rough and raw from use. “God, you.... Oh. Yes.” Ronon wasn’t sure if that approving tone was meant for the sex in general, or for the way that Ronon’s hand was still stroking in light, warm arcs over his chest, so he kept doing it just to be safe.

“How badly you needed that?” That was sort of funny to Ronon, the idea that someone who lived in a place like this could think in terms of _neeed_ , could really imagine himself to be dangerously deprived. And yet Rodney did seem to think that way about a lot of things. “You should do it more,” Ronon said, looping his arms loosely around Rodney’s abdomen.

Rodney snorted. “Trying to do it less.”

“What for?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Rodney said shortly.

Ronon almost let that pass by. Maybe he wouldn’t understand. Then after a moment he said, “I’m not stupid.”

“I never said you were.”

“I’m pretty sure you have said so.”

“Well, maybe I have. Fine, you are stupid, but only to the ordinary degree. You’re not stupid in any especially remarkable way.” With unexpected grace, Rodney reached up and back, digging his fingers all the way into Ronon’s hair with a throaty noise of satisfaction, then let his arms drop again, leaning his entire weight back on Ronon as though he were an armchair. “So, no stupider than the next gun-toting alien, and God, a much better fuck than – well, than I imagine most of them are. Not that I’ve made a study of the subject, but I can calculate the odds.”

Ronon rolled himself down to the carpet slowly, giving Rodney time to get his balance and follow him down if he chose. He did choose to, crouched on all fours over Ronon and tracing light, sensual kisses over his face. Ronon cupped his hands over Rodney’s ass and let his eyes drift shut, enjoying all of it. He parted his lips and didn’t have to wait long for Rodney to take the hint and give him another one of those careful, thorough kisses.

Their mouths made a moist sound when they parted, barely audible even in the silence. “You’re a good fuck, too,” Ronon said. It didn’t quite sound like the polite thing to say, but he didn’t know what kind of etiquette Rodney’s people used in such situations, so he was forced to rely on Rodney’s lead. Rodney wasn’t normally his first choice to model Earth social conventions for him, but there was nobody else handy. He opened his eyes and saw the dark look on Rodney’s face, inward-turned darkness, faraway eyes, and he reached up to rub the back of Rodney’s neck lightly. “Will....” He probably should know, even if he didn’t want to ask. “Will Sheppard be angry at us?”

Rodney laughed at that, a ragged laugh that didn’t sound amused. “Oh, damned if I know. If it’s all the same to you, I think I just won’t mention it to him. Err on the side of caution and all that.”

Ronon frowned. Keeping secrets from your taskmaster was never a good idea. Also, it never really worked for long. But he was willing to do whatever Rodney thought was best for everyone; Rodney was the one who knew Sheppard best, after all. “Will we...will we do this again?”

Something flickered through Rodney’s eyes, a little surprised and a little – hurt? Happy? Insulted? Flattered? Ronon had no idea. So complicated, already things were getting complicated, and he should probably never have done this. “Do you want to do this again?”

Was he supposed to want to do it again? He didn’t know the answer. “Yes,” he said hesitantly. “Maybe?”

Rodney looked at him for endless awful moments, impossible to read, thinking things that were frustratingly outside of Ronon’s grasp. Finally he moved off of Ronon, pushing himself with a little bit of difficulty up to his feet and looking around for his clothes. “Well, I don’t know,” he said gruffly. “This has all happened fast. I just – I don’t know what’s going on, here.”

“That’s fine,” Ronon said. “I only– You asked. I only said that because you asked.”

Rodney sat down on the edge of his bed as he zipped up his shirt, his hair all ruffled up and his cheeks still flushed as if he’d been out in a strong wind. “Listen,” he said. Ronon listened, but that seemed to annoy Rodney somehow, and he said, “You know, it’s ridiculous how handsome you are,” as if that were something Ronon had done specifically to antagonize Rodney. “It really is overkill, you understand that, don’t you? I mean, you could just have been good-looking the way that – that men are, that some men are, because that’s fine, that’s a fine attribute to have, handy in any number of circumstances, and God knows I’m used to coping with that, but you? The way you are? It’s like a personal insult to those of us who are still trying to pretend we’re straight. It’s very uncalled for.”

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“You aren’t bright, though, which is a small mercy. If you could do calculus, I’d probably have to kill myself. It’d be the only honorable way out.”

Ronon smiled broadly. What was it about Rodney that made all his jokes funny even when he didn’t get them? It was such hard work to stay focused in the field, not to stand around uselessly and listen to him talk in those spiky cadences and that strange stew of exaggerations and insults and science. “Honestly. I don’t know what you’re saying to me. Except that I think you called me ridiculously handsome.”

“I don’t need this. I don’t need...two of you.”

“There’s really only one of me,” Ronon said mildly. Rodney tossed him his pants as he sat up and started to his feet. Ronon put them on, and the necklaces next, and then all of a sudden he had Rodney’s hands on his hips. He let himself be drawn forward, then sucked in a startled breath as Rodney bent down to kiss his stomach, just above the waist of his pants, slowly and suggestively. Ronon touched his hair gently, and when he raised his head, his eyes were sharp and strange and sad in a way that made Ronon’s chest feel tight with sympathy.

“The reason I needed you to fuck me,” Rodney said throatily, and Ronon tried to pay attention to the meaning of his words instead of to the unexpected quiver that the word _fuck_ in Rodney’s voice now seemed capable of sending through his thighs, “is that I can’t with – him. With the Colonel. I mean, I can, I have. But I try not to. I wouldn’t, except that sometimes he’s – just – persuasive, he’s always persuasive, but sometimes I can’t tell him no when I know I should, and sometimes it’s me who can’t...stop.”

Ronon’s thumb traced down the shell of his ear, keenly aware of the way that he turned his head without hesitation, lifting his face toward the warmth of Ronon’s hand. He pressed another kiss to the inside of Ronon’s wrist, then shifted away. Ronon let him go and said, “I don’t understand that reason.”

“No, I think you do,” Rodney said with something like a laugh. “Why were you here for two months before you had sex? Why did you give away your dinner tonight? I saw you do that. You’re still wearing that same ratty sweater you’ve been wearing for seven years, for God’s sake. Why don’t you– You can’t tell me now that you’re not a sensualist; I’ve seen you eat Kraft Dinner. Why don’t you do all the things I know you must want to do, now that you can?”

He’d never asked himself that. He’d never been around anyone who cared why he did the things he did on his own time. “I don’t know.” Rodney rolled his eyes, as if Ronon were being intentionally stupid, so he tried to do better. “I guess because...I’m scared it might go away? And if I don’t get used to things being so nice, then I won’t have...much to lose.”

Rodney’s mouth twisted into a joyless smile. “You see? You do understand. You’re not as stupid as everyone thinks you are.” He gripped Ronon again, his hands around Ronon’s waist this time, and kissed the center of his chest. “Dex,” he said softly, even shyly. “You have to go now.” The words vibrated pleasantly against Ronon’s skin, almost too pleasantly for him to focus on the meaning. “There’s a small enough chance that I’ll ever get my life sorted out in any sort of rational manner, and exactly zero chance I’ll do it with you standing around shirtless in my bedroom.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said, stepping backwards out of Rodney’s reach. It was a relief, really. He was getting much better at being around people, but he didn’t think he was ready to sleep beside another person, even one who smelled as nice as Rodney did and might feed him something else delicious and illegal for breakfast.

He wasn’t expecting a goodnight kiss, but he was hoping for one.

The knock at the door made that impossible, but when Ronon finally got to his own bed, he laid down on top of his own bed and went to sleep fully clothed for the first time since his first week in Atlantis, and he dreamed disjointedly of a man wearing black with a black mask over his face, and the sound of breaking branches under his feet when he knew he should be moving noiselessly, and sitting on his old barracks bunk with Rodney McKay beside him, kissing and kissing him until the world fell away.


	3. Conscience

“What?” Sheppard said when Ronon peered around the corner of the alcove he’d taken as quarters in the cave system. Sheppard had already bedded down on the floor of what looked like the old man had used it as a winter storeroom, after giving the rest of the team the more lived-in, comfortable rooms, and he at least looked comfortable enough that he wasn’t making any move to get up. He also shifted his left arm slightly so that his body blocked Ronon’s view of it, so it must look pretty bad.

“We probably could have made it back to town before dark,” Ronon said.

Sheppard shrugged. “If you’re in such a hurry, we’ll head back in a couple of hours. Just let me catch a nap first, okay?”

“How’s your arm?”

“It’s fine,” he said tersely. “Listen, did you need something?”

Yes.

Maybe.

Yes. Please.

It was hopeless and he knew it. Sheppard didn’t know, couldn’t possibly understand what Ronon needed. Some days it was a relief, the ability to have the privacy of his own thoughts. He had never had that under Kel; Kel had known him far too well, anticipated his every move, left Ronon nowhere to go except to play out his maneuvers. But some days – some nights, like tonight, he missed...being known.

Hopeless, but he had no other choice. He only knew how to be what he was.

He came up to the edge of Sheppard’s bedroll and knelt on the stone, crossing his arms over his chest to show that he was unarmed and placing himself at Sheppard’s mercy. “I disobeyed your order,” he said, and it was strange how he stumbled over the words. He’d done this a hundred times. He was trained to do this. It had just been...so long ago now. He’d gotten used to being alone and answerable for his mistakes to no one but himself.

Sheppard’s eyebrows shot up, and he tried to push himself up on his elbow, only remembering his injured arm when it was too late. He collapsed down to the floor with a hiss of pain. “Fuck, Ronon,” he growled. “That’s what you’re keeping me up for? Get some sleep and forget about it.”

Hopeless. He’d known it, but it hurt anyway. He was alone, endlessly alone among people who would never know what he wanted, never be able to connect with him even if they tried. He should get up and go to his own rest. He should start teaching himself how to think like an Atlantean, how to be one of them now, even though that job was hopeless, as well. He was an alien now; that was what everyone around him saw, and no place that he might go would offer him anything else.

“I disobeyed your order,” he said again, wanting to be strong, but sounding soft and lost.

Sheppard huffed out an impatient breath. “Well, given that you saved my life doing it, I think I’m gonna let it slide.”

Ronon lifted his gaze from the stones underneath him to Sheppard’s face and almost smiled. “I wasn’t expecting a particularly severe punishment.”

“Okay, Jesus Christ. Will it make you go away and let me sleep? Fine, what do you want? Do I make you peel potatoes, put you in a dunce cap, give you a wedgie? Tell me what we do here and let’s get it done.”

Ronon took off one of his necklaces, the white piece of shell broken into a triangle, and held it out to Sheppard. Sheppard looked at it quizzically before taking it out of his hand. “These are honor tokens, that I wear,” Ronon explained. “I forfeit this one to you.”

“I can’t take your stuff, Ronon. You’ve had this – a long time.”

“You only keep it until I’ve performed an honorable deed to redeem myself. Then you return it, once I’ve paid that debt.”

Sheppard looked immediately relieved and held the necklace back out to Ronon. “Good, you saved my life, we’re even.”

“Do you not _know_ the difference between ‘honorable’ and ‘effective,’ or do you just not care?” Once he’d said it, Ronon couldn’t believe that he had. He’d never snapped at a superior officer before, not once, and he’d certainly never accused one of dishonor. Sheppard was just so – hard to – so different from any officer Ronon had ever known.

“You’re reminding me kind of freakishly of my dad right now,” Sheppard said, in that cool, amused voice that he seemed to use when his eyes were angry. The shadows were too heavy in here to see his eyes well, but Ronon could guess. “Fine, you know what? Fine. This is mine, and I’ll keep it, and I’ll just have to try _really, really_ hard to recognize your big, giant honor when it bites me in the ass, because frankly, you know, I lean in the direction of wanting all my people alive and in their right minds by any means necessary, but what the fuck do I know? Hell, nobody ever thought I’d make it past Captain anyway. I always had a problem with that _honor_ thing, that I’m-a-huge-motherfucking-hero-so-I-have-to-whip-my-dick-out-at-every-opportunity-and-show-you-how-big-it-is thing. I’m slow like that.”

“You’re angry.”

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

Ronon took a deep breath, curling and uncurling his fingers and trying to recall the kind of discipline he’d once had, that had kept him standing motionless in the high summer heat for hours while his taskmaster yelled out strings of code and attack formations and latitudes and longitudes that he would need to remember for days. He’d been good at drill sequences like that. He’d had endless patience, endless trust in the rules of the game.

That was before the Wraith. That was when he was another man.

Slowly, Ronon took all his necklaces in one hand and lifted them off. “Take them all,” he said.

“No. What are you doing? No, go away.”

“Take them.”

“No! Why?”

“I – can’t tell you. I promised I wouldn’t tell you. But I can’t wear them now. I’ll earn them back from you.” Sheppard opened his mouth to argue again, and Ronon cut him off with, “Sheppard. I know these are not your ways, but this is a simple request. You’ve called me your friend in the past.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly the point. This isn’t what friends do, Ronon. They don’t – keep score against each other, they don’t give out demerits, they don’t – judge each other like this.”

“You are in command.”

“Not like that! We’re a team, okay? You and I, we’re part of a team. I can’t take these from you; I don’t have the right.”

If Sheppard didn’t have the right, nobody did. So...maybe nobody did.

Nobody could help him now.

Ronon knew the best thing would be to get up and go with what was left of his dignity – Atlantean dignity, the kind that made every man his own master and obsessed itself with the illusion of invulnerability, not Satedan dignity, which was a matter of finding your place and fitting into it, strong when you were called upon to be a leader, humble when you were called upon to serve.

Satedan dignity brought him here to his knees to atone for his wrongdoing and demonstrate that he knew his place as a soldier under Sheppard’s command. Atlantean dignity, he knew, required him to walk away from this and never speak of it again, to pretend that his wrongdoing had never been wrong and his grief was not– That none of his griefs were real.

Satedan dignity meant nothing here and now. Sateda meant nothing here. His whole life was a dead world unable to find its rest, any substance it once had washed out in blood and gunfire.

Courage meant the same thing on every world. Ronon gathered all of his and pressed his hands flat to his thighs, holding his arms rigid to keep them from shaking. “If you were to do this for me,” he said, choosing his words as carefully as he could, “there is nothing I would not do for you in return.”

He had made an offer like that only once before, to a man who had not deserved such honor as Ronon gave him. Ronon tried to force his fears into a different shape, to forge confidence from them. He was an older man now, wiser in every way; he had learned a lot about how to judge a man’s worth, and he did not think he was wrong about John Sheppard’s.

A stark silence followed, until Sheppard released his breath. “You are,” he said, his voice shaking slightly, “the most fucked-up person I’ve ever met. Go to hell, I can’t do this today.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked. It was a true question; Sheppard was off-balance somehow, and Ronon thought he had been even before Ronon had come into the room.

“My fucking arm hurts! Also, I got a nice old man and a teenage girl killed today, and hey, damn, Dr. Beckett’s magic genocide drug doesn’t work after all.”

Got her killed? Nearly gotten killed by her was closer to the truth. “The Wraith aren’t.... It’s not genocide.”

“Sure it is. Hey, it’s not a complaint, I’m just putting it out there. Sooner or later, we are going to find a way to wipe these fucking things off the face of the universe, and I won’t give a damn. Because they’re not people, right? Because nobody will miss them. Makes sense to me, but you know, I’ve got no honor to speak of. Maybe if I did....”

“They are a plague. Don’t your doctors eradicate diseases when they can? Is that genocide, too?”

“Yeah, well, smallpox doesn’t hide behind its dad because it’s fucking afraid of you. That’s the thing. I’ve never had to deal with one that seemed...scared of me before. It doesn’t exactly make you feel like the good guy.”

“They do not care if you are afraid of them!” He didn’t mean to yell, but his voice wasn’t entirely under his own control, and too loud or too soft were his only choices. He kept his head down, his face hidden behind his braids, but he could hear the rustling sounds of Sheppard’s bedroll as he sat up.

Lightly, almost imperceptibly, Sheppard touched his hair, flicked some of it back over his shoulder so that he could look at Ronon. Ronon lifted his eyes, and for one fleeting moment the memory of the last minutes of the battle, when he knew that he and the others standing were only waiting their turn to be harvested – of the agonizing shock of their hands on him – of the operating table, being bound face-down and not knowing why or what the stabbing pain in his back meant – of hearing the whine of the darts over his head again, again, again– For only a moment, all of that ebbed away. Sheppard’s eyes in the partial light of his utility lamp were bright with intelligence, soft with concern, full of understanding, beautiful.

Any taskmaster who looked at one of his men that way.... And yet, as Sheppard himself would be quick to remind Ronon, he was no taskmaster.

Ronon lifted his own hand to Sheppard’s hair, short and warm and silky against his skin, and for once Sheppard did the reasonable thing and leaned in to kiss him.

It wasn’t enough, not nearly. It was faint, tantalizing, a restless brush back and forth of amazingly soft lips against his, a passing suggestion of the tip of a tongue. Ronon found himself leaning closer and closer, gripping Sheppard’s hair, wanting the kind of kiss that would take everything else away, but Sheppard continued to lean back without giving it to him.

Ronon broke away and pressed the necklaces in his other hand against Sheppard’s chest without words. Sheppard hesitated, and Ronon said, “Please. I shot a man in cold blood, under a flag of peace. He thought he was there to do business with Teyla. I gave him no time to draw his weapon. It was not battle, it was murder.”

After a shocked silence, Sheppard said, “Okay, the fascinating part to me is that neither of you saw fit to _tell_ me about this.”

“She– “ Ronon stopped himself in time; there was certainly no honor in blaming his own decision on someone else, no matter whose idea it had been; he might not have been happy, hiding this from his commander, but he’d had the choice not to and he didn’t take it. That made it his deed, not hers. “It was done.”

“What did he do? Because, I’m sorry, you get kind of feisty when the guns start coming out, but I have a hard time believing you’d kill somebody just out of the clear blue sky. You must have had...some kind of reason.”

“I had every reason. He was the man who betrayed six thousand Satedan soldiers to their deaths. He ordered us to fall back from the evacuation and give battle against the Wraith. He knew we would fail, and the evacuation would fail.” Sheppard put a comforting hand against his arm, and Ronon looked up again into those beautiful eyes, closer now than before. Sheppard was no enlightened Master; he could be caustic, and he could most certainly be ruthless when pressed, but he had a way of listening when Ronon spoke that seemed to involve his whole body, fully dedicating himself to taking in what Ronon had decided he needed to hear. It made Ronon believe he was someone to confide in, as a child would go to his village Master with his childish cares. “Do your people believe in revenants? In the unquiet dead?”

“I guess some of us do.”

“Mine do. When a Satedan dies fittingly, his soul returns home to Sateda-of-the-Sun, the land too bright and wonderful for the living to look on. The Wraith-killed lose part of their souls, and they are not strong enough to make the journey. They remain stranded on Sateda-of-the-Land, invisible to their loved ones, revenants with no home anywhere. When I saw those pictures – the pictures you gave me – I thought of all those revenants, walking the streets I used to know, how alone they would be forever, and I swore to myself that I would give them their revenge. I thought I meant...genocide. But when I heard that Kel was alive, within my reach, I knew how I would complete my oath.”

“Well, then...that’s what you did. You killed him for honor, right?” Sheppard clearly still couldn’t make any sense out of that, but he was frowning in concentration, doing his best to make the concept fit in his head.

For honor – his honor, his people’s. And it was well done, quick and clean in spite of his rage, a careful and disciplined maneuver that, ironically, Kel would once have been proud of. Kel had been selfish, Kel had been a profiteer and an opportunist, Kel had claimed to love him and then abandoned him to a nearly inevitable death of body and soul – but he had always appreciated the beauty of a surgical strike. However many sins Kel had committed, however insufficient as a man he had been, he had loved the art of warfare and passed that on to his favorite. In his way, Kel must have found it difficult to walk away from the greatest battle in history. How many faithful lovers he had abandoned in the end, and Kel an officer of the Great Infantry, a man who had sworn to live and die for his people.

“I don’t want to feel this way anymore!” The words were hard-torn from his throat and seemed to take all his strength. Sheppard wrapped his arms tight around Ronon as he slumped forward against his commander’s body. He ran one hand up and down Ronon’s back, the motion quick and strong like rubbing feeling back into frost-numbed limbs. “I did the only thing I could do, but I loved him once. And I hate him even though he’s dead. And I might love him even though I hate him, and it’s all -- too much. I have to be rid of it. Somebody has to take this away from me, and I don’t know who, if you won’t.”

Sheppard made little shushing sounds in his ear like a woman, like a mother. It was strange, but soothing. “God, I wish it were that easy,” he said. “I wish I had some great superpower that meant none of us had to live with the things we’ve done, but I don’t have it, I can’t do it. You had to shoot that man, I had to shoot that girl; it’s not the fun part of war, but then you go to bed and you get up and you get back in the game. You live with your past because there’s no way to get rid of it. There’s not. I wish there was.”

“I could... Back home, I would have been able to atone. You – someone like you – would have overseen it, you would have told me when it was enough.”

“Ronon. I’m not going to do that. I’ll be your friend, I’ll be your commander, but I won’t live your life for you.”

“I know.” He had known. That didn’t mean he didn’t have to try. Ronon lifted his head and kissed him again, pressing him harder now than before, and Sheppard dropped back to one elbow, tilting his head back so that his head rested cradled in Ronon’s palms. He protected Sheppard’s skull that way as he bore him down to the bedroll and the hard stone underneath.

“This is one ugly shirt,” Sheppard noted as his one good hand and both of Ronon’s worked in coordination to get it off.

“That’s what Teyla said, too. I got it from one of the Athosians, and she says the reason he didn’t want it anymore was that I guess it’s out of fashion now or something.”

“Great, you’re wearing an Athosian leisure suit. Can we burn it?”

“I might want to wear it home,” he said, but right at the moment what he wanted to do was throw it across the room, which he did. “Anyway, it’s comfortable,” Ronon added, sliding his hand up Sheppard’s neck and under his jaw to tilt his head back again and lick his throat.

When Sheppard had managed to recover his bearings from that a bit, he picked up the necklaces he’d laid aside and began to slip them back over Ronon’s head. Ronon flinched away, and he said, “You’ve earned these. Anyone else who’d been through what you’ve been through over the years, they wouldn’t give a shit about honor anymore. You do. That’s how I know you still have it.”

Ronon smiled down at him. “You don’t understand honor,” he said, but what he wanted to say was, _Tell me what you see in me, tell me how it could possibly be enough_. The code Ronon had been raised under was uncompromising; it demanded honor, loyalty, integrity, diligence, demanded that he be respectful as a son, generous as a friend, obedient as a soldier, courageous as a leader, that he act with correct form and with gentleness and sincerity in his heart rather than rage or selfish pride. He had never fully lived that code; he didn’t know anyone who had. Discipline and commitment, the Masters had taught him from the great texts of the sages – through discipline and commitment, one approaches ever closer to perfection, always spurred forward by the knowledge that you could do more, struggle harder against weakness and corruption, always kept in motion by the knowledge that filling your destiny meant being more than you already were.

The one thing Ronon had never been was good enough. It was a life’s work, the Masters assured him, an old man’s achievement, to be able to live in perfect harmony. An impatient boy like Ronon could only be counseled to strive hard – discipline, commitment – and follow the laws and the texts and the guidance of his superiors, and someday, someday it would be enough. Not yet. Never yet. But he was still a boy, taking his first steps on a long road. He wasn’t expected to be good enough, only to fill his appointed place, to keep the code in his heart, and to allow himself to be led by those wiser than himself when he found himself going wide of the mark.

“You don’t understand honor,” he said again, quietly. To believe in honorable _enough_? What meaning could a thing like that even have, and why did his heart pound so eagerly to think that whatever it was, Sheppard could find it somewhere inside of him?

“No, but I’m totally turned on by it, so wear them for me, okay?” Ronon wasn’t sure he believed that, but he allowed Sheppard to lower them again over his head. Sheppard fussed with his hair briefly, pulling his braids loose from the cords, and Ronon smiled again. Colonel Sheppard could be very particular about hair sometimes.

Ronon leaned over him, nuzzling his face gently. “I want to tend you,” he murmured. “Will you let me?”

“Yeah, I don’t really know what that means?” Sheppard said, his voice rising oddly high as Ronon’s fingers brushed his sides where the hem of his shirt had ridden up to bare a strip of pale skin. “But I’m pretty sure you have my permission.”

“I know you already have a favorite. And McKay is my friend, too. I wouldn’t try to replace him even if I could. Also, I don’t think I could.”

“He’s fairly one-of-a-kind.”

“You’re so pretty,” Ronon whispered against his eyelids. “I would have wanted this from you even if you weren’t an officer.”

“You know, I’m really glad I was operating under that assumption anyway, or I would have to be extremely skeeved by all this.” Ronon didn’t know what _skeeved_ meant, but if there was one thing he knew about Sheppard, it was that this mattered to him; Sheppard needed to be respected and followed because he was John Sheppard, not because of his uniform or his rank or his decorations. Well enough, Ronon could give that to him. He respected Sheppard’s position, but the way that Sheppard stirred his senses and his emotions had nothing to do with such formalities.

 _He is not Kel_ , Ronon thought, dazzled by the easy truth of it. With Kel, there had been no separation at all between the taskmaster and the man; service to one, Ronon had felt, was necessarily service to both. Here nothing was the same. He would have been honored to serve Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard, but for tonight, bar the door and leave him alone with soft lips, soft hair, soft brown eyes alive with humor and spirit and compassion -- with John.

“You’re very sensitive about your rank,” he teased gently.

“You’re very fetishy about it.”

Ronon shrugged. “It’s just how I was raised. May I call you John? Or is that an honor you reserve for– “

“It’s an honor I feel pretty comfortable extending to anyone who sucks my dick. As I’m kind of _really_ hoping you will.”

“We don’t do that on my planet. It is considered unclean.” He couldn’t hold the pretense for more than a moment, not against that look on John’s face. “I’m joking. We do that.”

“You are _so_ peeling potatoes for that one when we get home.” Ronon was still fighting back laughter as he knelt up to strip John, but the sight of him lying naked and nearly luminous, like a strip of new white moon, against the dark blue of his bedroll made the laughter dry up, along with every other noise his throat might have been able to make. Tentatively, Ronon reached out and drew his hand down the center of John’s body, from breastbone to groin, alongside the place where his cock rested against his belly. “Fuck,” John said breathlessly. “Oh, fuck, this is gonna be good.”

Somewhere in the shadows of his mind, Ronon could feel the boy lurking, the young recruit he’d been when he first learned to do this – nearly sixteen, terrified and aroused in equal measure, and each sensation nudging the other to greater heights – desperate to perfect himself through this, through every task he was given. Abruptly, Ronon leaned forward and cupped John’s chin hard in his hand and kissed him with all his strength. He could feel John’s cock shiver between their bodies. “Try not to talk a lot,” he said dryly when he pulled away again. “You don’t want to break my concentration.” John shook his head firmly, then put his good arm up with his hand behind his head, smiling with one eyebrow raised as if to say _ready when you are_.

Ronon crawled backwards far enough to put his hands on John’s knees, pulling them up and apart. He slid his hands down the inside of John’s thighs, getting the measure of John’s cock with his eyes – slim and graceful-looking, like Sheppard himself, rosy red and leaning rather jauntily off to the left; trust Sheppard to be off-center in every possible way. As his hands came up far enough for his thumbs to brush intimately near John’s anus, he lifted his hips into the touch, making Ronon smile. Were all Atlantean men so deliciously quick to go to their backs with their legs apart? Maybe someday he’d get to visit their homeworld....

He couldn’t resist touching for just a moment, the smooth, firm skin along his ass, the delicate skin and thick hair protecting his testicles, the heat at the base of his dick. He didn’t notice himself chewing on his lower lip until John said, “Okay, that would be the ‘hungry look’ I’ve heard rumors about. It _is_ hot.”

“Rumors?” When he understood, he was slightly scandalized, but mostly...intrigued. “The two of you have...spoken of me?”

John laughed low in his throat, a sound barely distinguishable from growling. “Now that is another story for another day. God, Ronon, please do not make me order you to suck it; neither of us would be able to live with ourselves in the morning.”

“I think I would.” 

Ronon stretched forward above him and John’s legs snapped closed, pressing hard on either side of Ronon’s hips as he kissed the hollow of John’s throat. He let John wrap his legs around him and pull in with them, trying to guide the hard cock inside Ronon’s leather pants to rub against his own erection, while Ronon let his hands sweep slowly up John’s sides, his ribs, the narrow barrel of his chest, and finally across his nipples. He found them so hard they were almost sharp, and still tightening under Ronon’s thumbs. John squirmed shudderingly beneath him and said, “You may want to be warned, I’ve been known to come just from having my nipples sucked.”

“That’s an admirable skill,” Ronon said, quite sincerely.

“Yeah, not all my partners are too pleased by it.”

“It’s all right,” Ronon murmured, leaning close by his ear. “If you come, we’ll just start over again. I won’t mind.”

He tried closing his mouth around one of John’s nipples and sucking steadily on it, then he moved to the other and tried running the flat of his tongue over and around it. John’s preference between the two was not entirely clear to him, and he didn’t seem in any state to answer questions about it. Reluctantly, he chose not to test that claim about John’s nipples, choosing instead to kiss his way down John’s flat belly to the place where smooth skin gave way to a clear line of cloud-fine dark hair that widened and thickened as it led down to his cock. John’s hands coiled deliberately into his braids as Ronon used his tongue to circle the base of it. “Suck it,” he growled.

“Is that an order?” Ronon said innocently in the pause between tonguing the base of his cock and dropping down lower to nibble just barely on his balls.

“That’s out-and-out begging.”

“It’s really not. You’ll know begging when you get there.”

He moved his mouth back to the sweat-slick and trembling top of John’s inner thigh and worked slowly down it, his fingers dancing on the rougher, hairier skin on the top of his thigh and over his knee and down his shin. He sat back on his heels when he’d reached John’s ankle and pulled his leg up to slide his toes into Ronon’s mouth while his fingers massaged deeply into the bottom of John’s foot. He didn’t know anyone in a combat zone whose feet didn’t hurt most of the time. He couldn’t resist running his cheek along the bottom of John’s foot, feeling the shiver go up John’s whole body at the rough scrape of his beard against callused skin.

Before he got to the business of sucking John’s cock, Ronon slipped off one of his necklaces, made of simple strips of braided leather, and pulled back his hair before knotting the cord around it, as best he could with faintly trembling hands. He only managed the feat at all by closing his eyes against the sight of John Sheppard, flung out wantonly on the floor beneath him, sweat dripping down his temples and beading up in the valleys of his collarbone, cock hard and lips parted. He leaned down to kiss John quickly – smooth lips, such a warm, eager mouth, and he devoutly hoped there would be a time later on when that mouth.... But, as they said in the service, the mission is everything. He kept eye contact with John for as long as he could while he crawled backwards.

“Yes yes yesyesyesyes,” John gasped when Ronon took him into his mouth. He couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, not with the taste and the heat of a hard cock pressing down his tongue, nudging the roof of his mouth, dripping thick, pungent drops of come down the back of his throat. He slid his mouth back up and then down again, and when John draped his calves over Ronon’s shoulders and crossed his ankles behind his neck, the feeling of being weighted down and held was so intense that Ronon shuddered and moaned from deep in his chest, his fingers clutching desperately and finding no purchase on the soft skin of John’s belly. John hissed and thrust up hard, rasping out, “Take it, take it, God, you were fucking _made_ for this, weren’t you?”

Not made for it, Ronon thought wryly, but trained well. He let soft silence fall across his rational mind, his muscles relaxing, his throat expanding, and this, this is what he’d wanted, all he’d come here needing: a way out. Some clear objective that he could complete without mixed feelings or second thoughts or doubts or regrets, something righteous, like everything used to be and not enough was anymore.

When he pulled away, John roared out something that Ronon didn’t think even began as an actual word. “Na, na, my friend,” Ronon said, and his voice slid unexpectedly back to the lilting inflections of his home province, the poor farmer’s accent he’d been so ashamed of when he’d first enlisted that he’d learned to speak in single syllables and half sentences until he mastered the low, short tones of military speech. “Easy, go easy,” he said, sliding his hands under John’s ass and pushing him over onto his stomach as gently as he could.

It seemed difficult for John to find a supported position that didn’t put too much pressure on his gouged, slightly swollen left arm. He finally laid it out away from his body and curled the other arm underneath him to rest his head on. Ronon cast a critical eye over the smooth expanse of his back, the way his posture, like everyone’s, varied taut, rigid places and restive ones, and he chose to begin at the small of John’s back.

He had barely sunk the heels of his hand all the way down into the muscle there before John was groaning in utter, grateful abandon. How long had it been since anyone in Atlantis had tended their Colonel? He was knotted up from neck to tailbone and the sounds he made as Ronon’s hands worked deeper and deeper began to sound less like groans and more like sobbing relief.

This part could be done quickly, a ritual obligation, but it became almost immediately obvious that to rush through it would be a sort of betrayal, so Ronon let himself concentrate completely, finding each band of muscle in its proper order and using the kind of touch on it that was demanded before going on to the next. It would have been easier with the correct sequence of oils on hand, or any oil at all, but at the same time there was something unbearably intimate about the dry feel of John’s skin under his hands, utter nakedness. Ronon was so aware of it that he almost felt John would leave prints with his body on the pads of Ronon’s fingers rather than simply the reverse. His cock stirred with new degrees of heat and impatience inside his pants, but Ronon exerted control. There would be time for that, yes, but now the moment belonged to John.

“God,” John choked. “God, God. I’ve never had a backrub that I would seriously consider choosing over the oral sex before.”

“Who’s asking you to choose?” Ronon said, and John moaned.

He stopped breathing altogether when Ronon’s hands came to rest on his buttocks, and when Ronon parted them carefully and dipped his tongue between he was rather afraid that the sharp cracking sound he heard was John’s forehead dropping against the floor. “Ow,” John said faintly. Probably that was what it had been. “Fuck you, don’t _stop_.”

He didn’t stop – only paused for a moment to say, “The point of this is not to injure yourself worse than before.”

“Ronon, if I spontaneously catch on _fire_ , you can send for help. Otherwise, assume I’m healthy enough that the rimjob is still my number-one priority, okay?” Ronon nodded and pressed his tongue deeper, flat against the hot, sharp-tasting breach of his body. John shuddered convulsively and spread his legs obligingly wide, getting his knees underneath him so that he could press up against Ronon’s tongue. Ronon couldn’t resist stroking down John’s flank and his trembling thigh.

Everything in John seemed to tighten again – but a much better sort of tightening than the tension Ronon had worked so hard to purge from his body. Reluctantly, Ronon left off with his tongue inside John’s body and slithered lower between John’s open legs, rolling onto his back as gracefully as he could without too much interruption in sucking John’s balls into his mouth. He spread one hand wide against the small of John’s back to pull him down and slid one finger of his other hand inside John as his mouth closed around John’s cock, less to suck on it than to make a comfortable sheath for it while John’s trembling turned into fierce contractions of muscle and then into the fever of orgasm.

John seemed weightless when Ronon flipped him as carefully as possible onto his back, lathing everything between John’s legs clean with his tongue before kneeling up between his legs and inspecting his work. He smirked slightly; with his dilated pupils and his lax limbs and the sweat shining all over his body, John looked as if he’d been smoking hanavan leaves for two days straight, or else as if he’d been the guest of honor at a pirate’s orgy.

“How’s your arm?” Ronon asked.

“Who fucking cares?”

That sounded all right, although Ronon still intended to drop a word in Dr. Beckett’s ear in the morning, just in case John’s foolish sense of Atlantean honor was going to make him insist on ignoring his injury. Ronon was perfectly willing, for his own part, to have unanesthetized surgery if it should be necessary, but he didn’t understand the kind of man who would claim that it didn’t _hurt_.

Many things hurt, and were still necessary. Treat them if you can, put them behind you if there was no cure – a fusion of Satedan pragmatism and Atlantean bravery that Ronon thought would make a most suitable text.

“C’mere,” John said, a soft, seductive rumble of breath, and the last of Ronon’s hair slipped loose from his makeshift tie when he leaned over, veiling both of them while they kissed. John slipped his hands – pilots always had such dextrous hands, such control – between their bodies and began to make short work of the difficult knots on Ronon’s pants.

Ronon heaved himself away, landing heavily on his back beside John. John propped himself up on his good elbow and said, “Problem?”

The throb of his neglected cock would more or less fit that description. Ronon clenched the leg of his pants in his hand, pulling the crotch tighter and providing some slight relief. “We’re done here,” he said gruffly. “Take your nap, and I’ll go carry on the watch with Teyla.” Just as soon as he could make himself move.

“Hey, wow, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m pretty sure we’re not done.”

Ronon closed his eyes and tried counting backwards from one thousand; he was developing an appreciation for the repetitive, mind-numbing dullness of numbers. “I asked to tend you, and that’s what I wanted. It is a gesture of – of respect – the willingness to put yourself aside completely and commit yourself to someone else’s desires.”

“Okay, don’t be weird. I thought we were past the weird stage?”

“It is not _weird_. It’s sacred and beautiful and I wanted to do it, so I did it. If I let you balance the scales, then it isn’t tending anymore.”

“What is it?”

He turned his head toward John, sure that his face looked as baffled as he felt. What sort of a question was that? “Sex.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, see, I don’t think I had full disclosure before we started. I pretty much thought we _were_ having sex. You can’t just spring some crazy alien orgasm-ritual on a person without explaining the terms first.”

More explaining himself. Ronon sighed.

“And anyway,” John continued blithely as he straddled Ronon’s thighs, returning to work on the laces, “I hate to bring out the big guns, but I did let you fuck my boyfriend, so you kind of owe me one.”

Ronon raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I remember either of us asking your permission for that.”

“Good point, but I didn’t kick your ass for it afterwards, and that has to count for something.”

Ronon’s other eyebrow joined the first, and he said in a lazy murmur, “I guess if that’s what you want, it’s not too late for you to give it a try.”

“Yeah, well. No. That’s okay.” He grinned wickedly, and Ronon realized too late that he’d been distracted, and that now John had his pants open and was sliding his hand inside and pulling Ronon’s cock free with a strong, sure grip. “Let’s just call it even.”

“Sex is nice, too,” Ronon managed to say as John’s hand worked in strangely arousing pulses around his cock, his thumb sliding over the head of it and spreading moisture downward to ease his firm strokes.

“See, I agree with you about that. We’re having a really nice multicultural bonding moment here.”

Bonding was nice. Ronon liked bonding. He slid his hand over John’s arm, aware of the bone and the shifting muscles, aware of the weight of John’s body resting on his legs, and he felt _with_ somebody, not just near them but with them. He opened his mouth to say something encouragingly sexy, but somehow what came out was, “Stay with me, with me, don’t leave me, John.”

John leaned over him, kissing his temple and petting his beard without breaking the driving rhythm of his strokes. “I never, ever leave one of my men,” he said, and his voice was quiet but thrumming with gravity and meaning. Ronon believed him completely.

He didn’t last much longer than that, and he kept his eyes closed while John licked his chest clean and retied his pants for him, embarrassed with himself. It was not his place to ask for such a thing as that – not from an officer, not from a man he’d not even known one full season, not from anyone whose heart belonged elsewhere.

“Hey,” John said gently, leaning down with his chest against Ronon’s, one hand stroking Ronon’s hair. “Hey, open your eyes and look at me.” Ronon obeyed. John’s eyes were serious, battle-serious, though not battle-cold, and Ronon fought a shiver. John brushed a kiss over his lips and said, “You are not one of the ghosts. You’re not dead, and you’re not alone.”

“I feel alive right now,” Ronon admitted.

“Yeah, and you’re going to stay that way, or you’ll answer to me.” Ronon smiled and reached out to cup his hand against John’s cheek. “I can make it an order if you want.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Good. Now we’re making progress.”

Ronon rubbed his thumb over John’s mouth and then flicked it playfully against the tip of his nose. “Anything you say, Colonel.”


	4. Contagious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So clearly I got jossed within the first ten seconds of “Conversion.” For the sake of this series, here’s how it went down, okay? The episode “Instinct” was immediately followed by Alpha Centauri 3 (Conscience). The next morning, Ronon tipped Beckett off that he might want to take a look at Sheppard’s arm; while Sheppard bitched and moaned that he felt perfectly fine, Beckett got him home and ran the blood tests that revealed blah blah blah, followed by the rest of the events of “Conversion.”
> 
> As I put together the timelines in a way that didn’t do too much violence to canon, I realized that I had unexpectedly given the retrovirus a few extra hours of incubation time. That got me thinking about this.

“Don’t be a hero,” Rodney advised him less than an hour after the nursing staff changed shifts and Teyla excused herself to go to bed. Rodney sounded as if he almost couldn’t summon the effort necessary to be irritated; Ronon had never heard him sound worn out before. Rodney gestured toward the part in the curtain, with Colonel Sheppard’s feet just visible through it. “He’s out cold, he’s in no shape to appreciate your bizarrely canine loyalty. Get some sleep.”

“Not being a hero.” Or a dog, although what was the point in arguing about that part? Rodney saw him the way he wanted to see him, the way that made sense to him. Ronon had worked on enough teams before this to understand that, one way or another, everyone had to be made to fit into their particular role. He might have chosen a different role for himself than the big, protective animal who always came when called.... Or maybe he wouldn’t have. Didn’t matter now. “I have an appointment with the doctor in about twenty minutes.”

“Well, I should warn you, he’s not very sympathetic about any condition that he doesn’t consider ‘life threatening.’” Rodney made a short, deliberate gesture in the air with his fingers that seemed to express – what? Distrust in Dr. Beckett’s professional judgment, maybe. Ronon wasn’t sure, and he was too tired and edgy to want to think it through just then. “What’s wrong with you? Did you get hurt?”

“Virus goes in the bloodstream, right?” Rodney nodded, and Ronon looked away from him with a little shrug, leaning on the back legs of his chair. He hadn’t thought he’d feel...awkward talking about this. “I just want to get a blood test. In case.”

“Did you come in contact with any of the Colonel’s blood?” Ronon shook his head briefly, but even before he’d gotten that far, the light seemed to go on behind Rodney’s eyes, and he dropped down heavily into the chair beside him. “No,” he said, sounding both sour and a little dazed. He rubbed his unshaven cheek roughly and said, “No, obviously. Not his blood.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Ronon said. “I feel fine. Not too fine,” he specified when he saw Rodney’s nervous look. “Just...okay.”

Rodney sat with him in the infirmary until Dr. Beckett called him into his office, and even then Ronon could see him through the glass wall. Apparently Rodney, unlike Ronon, was good at sitting around waiting. Stubborn.

*

Rodney left the infirmary at the same time he did, but he didn’t say anything about it, or even look at Ronon. Ronon stayed a few paces behind him all the way down the hall to where their corridors split off from one another, and Rodney kept walking toward his own quarters without looking back.

Ronon stood there, around the corner from where he lived, feeling as lost as he’d felt in seven years of running. What was he supposed to do? Usually he could piece together what Rodney expected; usually it was buried somewhere in the middle of whatever Rodney was saying. This time, neither of them were functioning at their best.

Rodney was waiting in the doorway of his quarters – or, Ronon thought he was waiting. He was really just standing there, but why stand in the middle of your open door, looking up at the grooves where it was built to slide, if you weren’t waiting for something? Ronon stopped a few feet away, and his hand was opening and closing on its own as he wondered what it would feel like to _hit_ Rodney McKay, right in the jaw. If _that_ would make him acknowledge Ronon’s existence.

Instead, he said, “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” He wasn’t sure what for, but it felt like the thing to say.

Rodney stepped backwards into his quarters, and because he didn’t say anything to stop him, Ronon followed, and the doors slipped shut behind them. “You’re sorry?” Rodney said. “You’re _pathetic_. I really can’t even tell you how unimpressed I am – _infinitely_ unimpressed, and I am one of the few people in the universe capable of thinking on a large enough scale to have some idea of what _infinity_ means, infinitely unimpressed with you big, dumb Conan the Conqueror types and your– You would have done it, wouldn’t you? You’d have gone wandering into the giant nest of disgusting, parasitic death with a gun and a sharp stick just because you were _bored_ , because men like you don’t hang about waiting for the petty, pedestrian work of, oh, curing disease and designing elegant solutions to complex problems, God, no! You have to be action heroes, you have to risk your life, you have to tromp blithely out in front of everybody else and _die_ , and sometimes scientific discovery takes time, all right? You just have to wait, you have to _wait_ , I’m not ready yet– “ His hand found Ronon’s shoulder and dug in tightly. Ronon slid his arm around Rodney’s waist and pulled him close. “It’s too soon, I’m not ready to lose – any – anyone – God, I _hate_ men like the two of you, I should know better than to get myself tangled up with heroes....”

“You want me to go?” Ronon offered. It didn’t feel like Rodney wanted him to go, not the way he was pressing up against Ronon now, one arm snaked around his neck while the fingers of his other hand hooked into the weave of his sweater where the sleeve would attach if there was one.

“Yes, that’s right,” he said impatiently. The rough bark of his sarcasm lost none of its impact while his voice was muffled against Ronon’s chest. “I want you as far away from me as possible, can’t you tell? I certainly don’t want you to fuck me senseless while my lover is lying in the hospital half-dead and you’re probably carrying the most disturbing case of the space clap known to medical science, I certainly have at least that much dignity left.”

“I’m probably not sick,” he said, and kissed Rodney.

So good. Rodney tasted like nothing familiar; he tasted like finding something edible on a new planet, the relief, the hunger that flared up worse than before at the first sign of a chance to feed it, the sudden knowledge that you weren’t going to die today, not today and not from this. Ronon kissed him harder, leaning in so that Rodney had to stumble backwards under his weight. He put his hand up much too soon, his thick, warm fingers resting alongside Ronon’s mouth and pushing him away gently. “No, can’t,” Rodney croaked. “Fluids.... The virus.”

By now he’d be feeling it, if he’d been infected. Wouldn’t he? How long had it taken Sheppard? Eight hours or so, between the fight and the blood test, and he’d still felt fine. A few more hours – four? – until he’d agreed to be quarantined. When had he started to feel different? What were the first signs?

Had the need to touch Teyla felt like this, like starving for Rodney? No, Ronon didn’t think this was that. This was...old. Older than the virus, whatever he’d been trying to tell himself.

He put his hand around the back of Rodney’s skull and slid the fingers of his other hand inside the collar of Rodney’s shirt, feeling the thunderstorm of blood just underneath his skin. “I’ll be careful,” he said. “You’ll be okay, I promise.” 

It took three tries to stumble their way across to Rodney’s bed, and every time he staggered over some piece of clothing on the floor or just over Rodney’s toes, Ronon felt his cock twitch and get harder. Obstacles made everything feel better, Ronon guessed, which would explain how he got here, why he was so intent on fucking up Sheppard and Rodney’s relationship instead of going to the very minimal effort of meeting someone willing and available and, best of all, uncomplicated. He dropped Rodney onto his back and had one knee on the bed and the other digging into Rodney’s thigh when he said through the kisses, “This isn’t the virus. I wanted this way before.”

“I _don’t_ want this,” Rodney gasped. “This is adrenaline.” He pushed his hands up Ronon’s back, underneath his sweater. “This is post-traumatic stress syndrome. I don’t want you, I want John, but I can’t have him, so you’re my shallow substitute. This is because I’m sleep-deprived – hysterical – jealous – masochistic and self-loathing – God, yes, God, yes, I need you – no, don’t touch me, you can’t, we can’t.”

“Hush,” Ronon said shortly. He kissed Rodney’s chin, a soft press of closed lips. No fluids. The shape of Rodney’s erection stood out against the fabric of his pants, and Ronon spread his hand out, letting his fingertips find the edges and the heel of his hand drag up the shaft. It left a faint, invisible burn of not-skin on Ronon’s hand, the weave of smooth cloth that was still not nearly smooth enough to compare to the flesh underneath. He rubbed again, harder. He wanted it to burn.

Rodney clawed at his sweater; that wasn’t good, because it was old and it might rip apart any day now, and Ronon loved that stupid sweater that he’d scavenged from the ruins of some settlement where any survivors there might have been had just abandoned their possessions along with the dessicated bodies of their dead. It had been stored in a cedar chest, and amidst the spoiled food and the smoke and the stale rot of death, it had smelled so healthy and so real, like a forest.

At the same time, though, Rodney’s other hand was rubbing warm and firm against the back of his neck, and as long as he kept doing that, Ronon didn’t really own anything that he wouldn’t have been willing to let Rodney destroy. Stuff was just stuff, after all; he’d pick up more things along the way. There was no substitute, none at all, for the warm static that lapped all over his skin in the pulsing rhythm of that touch.

“Keep doing that,” Ronon said when Rodney’s hand stilled.

“Keep doing _that_ ,” Rodney said, thrusting his hips up. As if Ronon had any intention of stopping.

Because they couldn’t kiss (it seemed unlikely that the virus would have been dormant this long in his system – unlikely that just kissing could put enough of it into Rodney’s bloodstream to affect him – but on the other hand, whatever the science said, it seemed like something that _would_ happen, this destructive thing spreading between them, Sheppard to Ronon to Rodney, a shared sickness, an ugly bond of spit and come and insanity), they just looked at each other. Ronon had never stared into someone’s eyes in a situation like this before, so he didn’t have anything to compare it to, but it seemed both more and less intimate than kissing. Rodney’s face couldn’t stay still any more than his mouth usually could, and it was mesmerizing, the stuttering switch of expressions, the way he could retreat behind some unbroken seal, alone with his pleasure, and then abruptly be seeing Ronon, seeing right into him, not missing a thing. The way his face could be totally relaxed, soft with self-indulgence, and then in the twitch of a single muscle around his eye, drawn and grim and guilty and angry all at once. Ronon slowed his hand down when that happened, coaxing Rodney’s attention down from his head into his cock, breathing on his ear until he shuddered and tightened his arm around Ronon’s back and murmured, “Don’t tease, I’m so close, I need to come....”

“You will,” Ronon promised. “I just want to watch you a little longer.” Rodney made a long, low sound that sounded like protest, but his body arched up into Ronon’s touch with renewed force, like everything Ronon said or did to make him slow down was only driving him there faster.

They were both still fully dressed when Rodney came. The feel of his cock pulsing against his hand, the spreading dampness that Ronon could feel very faintly, the small, strangled, “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” that Rodney chanted as if startled past words, all combined to undo Ronon’s composure almost entirely. It was all he could do to roll off Rodney onto his back, one arm hanging listlessly off the edge of the bed, dizzy and aware of the too-bright lights and the ache of his own cock. All he wanted in the world was to bury it deep in Rodney’s body and fuck him hard, _hard_ , knock everything out of both of their lives but the feel of it – and thinking made it worse, made the ache spread into his bones. Don’t think about it. Don’t remember that you know exactly how it would feel, and how he’d beg you for more....

Beside him, Rodney sat up slowly. “I – I need a shower,” he said. Ronon looked up at him, and he could see the moment when Rodney managed to blink his way through his confused haze, the moment he looked down at Ronon’s body and really saw him there. “Oh,” he said awkwardly, and put his hand out like he was feeling for waves of heat coming off Ronon’s body. “I can – um, let me – “

His fingers brushed Ronon’s thigh. Ronon grabbed his wrist hard, ignoring the stifled noise of outrage, and pushed it away. “As soon as I get my results back,” Ronon growled, “I’m gonna need that to fuck you with.”

Rodney didn’t seem to be able to find anything to say to that. He didn’t even seem to be able to breathe for a minute there. “So...I’m going to take that shower,” he finally said. “You can – stay here?”

“I’ll be here.”

He listened to the water running and gave himself a headache forbidding himself to picture Rodney naked, his hands sliding through the foam of soap on his own skin. He picked up the headset that he’d discarded beside the bed and looked it over briefly; he was pretty sure he could leave it where it was and still be able to hear its beep when the Doctor called. He sighed deeply, almost a yawn, and rubbed his hands idly up and down his thighs, causing a slight rucking back and forth of his leather pants across his cock that felt – nice, but not more than he could handle. Just nice.

When Rodney came back out, he was wearing his underwear and nothing else. He seemed uncertain about how – whether? – to get back into bed, so Ronon reached out and took him by the elbows, pulling him down. Rodney was warm and still wet from the shower, and the thin fabric of his underwear stuck to his damp ass. It felt perfect when Ronon hauled him close, their knees locking neatly together, the arch of his body enveloping the arch of Rodney’s, that firm ass pressed just tightly enough against his crotch. Ronon ran his hand along Rodney’s chest.

“This feels like high school,” Rodney said abruptly.

“High school.”

“Yes, the – the alleged school they force you to go to in adolescence, which is really more of a dumping ground for everyone’s unwanted teenaged children, which would be all of them, than anything devoted to any kind of learning.”

Ronon had learned plenty in his adolescence. He must have, although at the time he’d felt that he wasn’t gaining any ground. Every week during his initial deployment had felt like a year, and he’d gone to bed every night frustrated at the fact that he was still half a boy, that he didn’t feel strong and competent and cool under fire the way a soldier was supposed to. He’d always been impatient with waiting. “Tell me about high school,” he said.

“Oh. Well, I didn’t really – I was speaking metaphorically. It feels like somebody’s high school, feels like...one would think high school.... I didn’t have the ordinary high school experiences. I graduated early, I was always ahead – I was young, and I didn’t have – I did have _friends_ , I’m not entirely – but the ordinary social experiences, pep rallies and keg parties and whatnot that you see in the movies.... I was in college by sixteen, and that was – college. I did go to one high school keg party, but I was in college when I went to it, so it might not count. On the other hand, I was sixteen and it was out of town, no one _knew_ I was in college, so for all intents and purposes it counts, I think. I drank four mudslides in an hour and broke a lawn gnome dancing in someone’s petunia garden in the house next door, and then I threw up in my cousin Charlotte’s Dodge. I’m sure it counts.”

“What’s a mudslide?”

“Chocolate alcohol,” Rodney sighed dreamily. “I never did confess to breaking the lawn gnome. I think that was when I realized that the criminal life couldn’t be as hard as one might think, if I could be that drunk and still make a clean getaway. It sparked a solid year of intense soul-searching, while I tried to decide whether to use my abilities for good or for evil.” After a pause he added, “I chose for good,” as if Ronon might be worried.

“What’s a– ?”

“God, please shut up,” Rodney said wearily. Somehow, it didn’t offend him. He smiled against Rodney’s neck and felt him shiver.

“When you want to join the Infantry, back home,” Ronon said, and it was surprisingly easy to say _back home_ , easier and easier every day to remember the parts he loved, “there’s a ninety-day examination period. It’s strict: no sex, no alcohol, you hardly eat anything but protein and supplements. Everything you do is monitored, and you work eighteen-hour days, no days off. At the end, if you haven’t broken, you can enlist. And the night you get your assignments, everyone in your exam grade has a party. They used to say that if you weren’t nine-tenths dead the morning after your grade party, you hadn’t really enlisted.”

“I suppose your enlistment went off without a hitch,” Rodney said. He sounded disdainful and amused at the same time. He sounded almost – affectionate.

Ronon chuckled into his neck. “I was still drunk the _next_ night, when I lost my virginity.”

After a moment, Rodney said, “And you were how old, on Pledge Week?”

He didn’t bother to ask what Pledge Week was. “Fifteen. How old were you?”

“What – when?” Rodney squeaked. He knew what Ronon meant, so he didn’t bother to repeat himself. “That’s _personal_ ,” Rodney said. “And anyway, I told you, I wasn’t – I barely went to high school, and then I was younger than everyone else in college and – focused! Very focused on my studies.”

“So, old,” Ronon translated. He’d never imagined he could find himself smiling this much while he was still almost dizzy from thwarted arousal. “John wasn’t your first, was he?”

“ _What? No!_ No, I was – no! Jesus. I was...twenty-two.”

“That’s not so old,” Ronon said. The lie made Rodney relax a little in his arms, though, so it was fine. Then Rodney started to wriggle around, turning against him until he was facing Ronon, sharing the pillow with their foreheads almost touching, and Ronon was even more glad that he’d had the sense to lie. He still couldn’t seem to quit smiling.

Rodney put his hand up and stroked Ronon’s cheek, then traced the curve of his spine between his shoulderblades, seeming to notice the way he was stressing his back and neck to fit around Rodney’s much shorter frame. Rodney’s mouth twitched and he said, “Lie back, for God’s sake. You’ll slip a disk.”

He didn’t quite like disentangling his arms from around Rodney, but he did have to admit that once he was stretched out flat on his back again, he was a lot more comfortable. He laced his fingers together and turned his palms out, stretching his arms into the air above him until his shoulders popped. He was a little surprised when he felt Rodney tugging on his sweater, but he shifted his shoulders so Rodney could pull it off of him and felt justly rewarded for his effort when Rodney smoothed his hand across Ronon’s chest. Rodney had surprisingly big hands for his size, thick and broad and dextrous. All those teenagers hadn’t known what they were missing.

“God, you’re....” Rodney said roughly, and there was something a little crazy glittering in his eyes; Ronon just caught a glimpse of it before Rodney lowered his mouth to Ronon’s chest. “I never– “ he mumbled between kisses, “made it with – guys like you – in college. High school. Ever.”

“You hate men like me,” Ronon reminded him, and Rodney half-laughed and half-groaned against his skin. “Hey, stop,” he said when Rodney began to kiss somewhere lower than his chest, though still somewhere higher than his waistband. He stumbled a little over the words, as if his tongue was putting up a fight against his brain, but he pushed ahead and said, “Can’t – yet. Remember?” The ache of his cock, which had subsided to an almost pleasant thrum of awareness while they’d talked, was real pain now, deep and relentless and oppressive. He almost couldn’t think through it – through wanting Rodney’s mouth on him now, now, now.

Rodney groaned as if he– It wasn’t possible, but almost as if it was just as hard for him to keep his mouth off Ronon’s cock. “I won’t, I won’t,” he said, as if that was supposed to make Ronon feel better. “I just have to – your skin – Jesus Christ, your body.” His fingers dug hard into Ronon’s waist, and every muscle in Ronon’s body seemed to jump at the first light touch of Rodney’s tongue at the edge of his navel, and that was just too much to take.

Hooking his hands under Rodney’s arms, he physically dragged Rodney back up and pressed a hard kiss to his mouth with nearly closed lips. Rodney made a muffled sound, but it didn’t sound like protest. “Just hold still,” Ronon growled against his mouth. He felt himself smile, just slightly, and said, “Why can’t you geniuses ever wait?”

“Okay, all right,” Rodney gasped. “High school. Dumb, terrified groping in the dark with all our clothes on. Pretend it never happened on Monday. Got it.”

“It’s not dark,” Ronon said, and Rodney made the lights go out with his brain. Ronon truly envied that skill. He ran his mouth over the stubble underneath Rodney’s jaw and murmured, “We pretend it never happened?”

“Don’t we?” Rodney returned.

Ronon thought about that. Sheppard didn’t seem like the kind of person who would make an issue out of it but...Rodney did. Yes, it was Rodney doing it, but Ronon had a feeling that wouldn’t stop him from being the one who took it personally. Somehow. He’d find a way. “Pretend whatever you want, I guess,” Ronon said, and Rodney kissed him again, lips parted just that much more this time, sweet, wet kisses with no tongue, spiced with all their unspoken questions – _how far? too far? what next? how much longer?_

“This is so warped,” Rodney said against his cheek, while Ronon slid his hand firmly up his spine. His skin was almost dry now, except at his hairline and the back of his neck, which Ronon thought was beading sweat instead of water from the shower. “I was so mad I could have _strangled_ you this time yesterday, I mean, assuming I were capable of strangling you or anyone else, but for the sake of argument I could have strangled you, and now....”

Yesterday was before he’d offered to go into the nest.... He’d known Rodney wasn’t yelling at him about that, but he’d kind of figured he was just yelling for no reason. “You were mad at me?”

“I could _hear_ you, you know. I could hear _him_. In the caves.”

“Sorry,” Ronon said, and this time he meant it.

Rodney snorted. “Oh, don’t bother, really. It’s none of my business, he’s made _that_ excruciatingly clear, and anyway my moral high-ground is somewhere below sea-level. I was just...feeling sorry for myself, and then – when Elizabeth said he might die, that he probably would die.... I don’t know, oddly, that cleared things up. I suppose I was – disappointed. I suppose I would have liked to be the last.... But I wasn’t angry anymore. It started to feel like an utter waste of time and energy. After all, I can work myself into fits, but he’s John, he’ll always be John. And I can try to make you into the other woman in my head, but it doesn’t...work. Quite. You’re still sort of damnably likeable. I’d be sleeping with you too, if I were him. Actually, I’m not him, and I’m sleeping with you anyway, so there you have it.”

“Yeah,” Ronon said, even though he didn’t know exactly what to make of any of that. Damnably likeable? Was that like ridiculously handsome? Rodney seemed to be perpetually annoyed over the fact that he liked Ronon, which took some of the ego-stroking out of the whole situation. It wasn’t as much fun as Ronon had always imagined it would be, this business of having sex appeal. “So...you do like me?”

Rodney opened his mouth, but apparently not to say anything. He just gaped at Ronon until he recovered, rolling his eyes and then pressing kisses all over Ronon’s face. Ronon sighed and spread his hands over Rodney’s back.

They both went still when Ronon’s headset beeped. It beeped a second time, and Ronon twitched involuntarily toward it, then couldn’t quite let go of Rodney. Rodney kissed the corner of his eye and whispered, “I like you a lot, I’ve never liked anyone this much this soon, and not that many people like it when I like them, so thank you. Answer it.”

“I’ve got your bloodwork back,” Dr. Beckett said in his ear, and Ronon slumped deeper into the mattress. The tone of his voice would be completely different if the news were bad. Ronon hadn’t been too worried, but it was still more of a relief than he had expected it to be. “Would you like to come up to the infirmary and have a chat?”

“Any reason I should be in a hurry?”

“Well, there’s policy against giving out medical data over a comlink. But no, I can’t think of any reason you should change your schedule. Just pop along whenever it’s convenient and you can have a look, if you like.”

“Thanks, Doc,” he said, and shoved the headset into the drawer beside Rodney’s bed. He rolled back toward Rodney and said, “So, good news,” before he pulled Rodney’s head to his and gave him the wettest, sloppiest, sexiest kiss he knew how to give.

Rodney didn’t let it go on very long, though, which started to seem pretty smart when Ronon realized he was only pulling away to wrestle with the fastenings on Ronon’s pants while he kissed and bit, light but sharp-toothed, against the tender skin on his stomach. Ronon flung his arm out blindly and pulled the drawer open, searching for something that felt like Rodney’s bottle of lube. “No, forget it, we don’t have time for that,” Rodney said as he worked the pants partway down Ronon’s hips. “This, I just want to do this.”

“No,” Ronon said, even though that sounded like the worst possible decision he’d ever made. Discipline, discipline. Discipline. Ronon drew a deep, shaky breath and said, “No, you want me to – that’s what you said you wanted – “

It was too much, he shouldn’t have said that. Rodney’s head came up like it was spring-loaded, and he fixed Ronon with those clear, intent eyes and the exact expression he used when the jumper scanners turned up something that nobody expected to find. “That’s what _I_ – ?” He cocked his head and stared harder, while Ronon wondered how insulting it would be just to grab his head and push it back down. “Do you always do what your partner wants to do in bed?”

“Nothing wrong with wanting to make it good, is there?”

Rodney’s fingers traced down the ridges of muscle on Ronon’s abdomen. “Nothing at all.” He leaned in and kissed the hollow at the base of Ronon’s throat lingeringly, and then said, “My turn to make it good, all right?” Ronon nodded, not that Rodney could see that when he’d already straddled Ronon’s legs and started kissing his way down his chest.

It was good. He was a little bit in love with Rodney by the time he came, and he had to roll over on his side facing away from Rodney to catch his breath, knotting his hand in Rodney’s sheets and waiting for the feeling to slow down along with his heartbeat. Rodney got out of bed and opened a drink from his refrigeration unit. He didn’t offer Ronon anything, for which Ronon was grateful, because he couldn’t have answered any questions at that moment. 

Rodney sighed comfortably when he burrowed back into bed. He ran his hand lightly up Ronon’s arm and then moved his fingers back to press beside his scar. “Does this hurt?”

“No.” The scar tissue itself was more sensitive than the rest of his skin, and sometimes it did hurt, if he got shoved to his back or if he stretched too hard during a workout. He assumed it was more sensitive to pleasure, too, but he’d never had anyone he could ask – that he _would_ ask to experiment on it. “Don’t touch it,” he said dully.

“Why?” Damn Rodney. What kind of a question was _why_? Because I said not to. Because I don’t like you thinking about what happened, what I used to be. Who asked why? And he didn’t even move his fingers, just kept drawing shapes around the scar. “Dex, would you look at me?” he said impatiently when Ronon didn’t answer him.

“Stop it,” he said shortly. It would’ve been easier to put up a fight if he’d been in his own bed, but he’d have to make do. “Just stop talking to me like I’m your...like you want it to be like this.”

“Like what?”

He flipped over and kept rolling until he was on top of Rodney with Rodney’s wrists in his hands, kissing him over and over until Rodney was whimpering desperately into his mouth. He gentled his kisses then, softening just enough to let Rodney lean up into it. Ronon kept kissing him until he found that moment, the second when their heartbeats entrained perfectly, when they were breathing together, when everything else fell away. When he let go of Rodney’s wrists, Rodney pushed both his hands up into Ronon’s hair, and Ronon had known he would do that. At that moment, they knew everything about each other. Ronon drew his hands up Rodney’s arms from shoulders to elbows and kissed Rodney’s lower lip.

When he pulled away, it took a moment for the fog to clear from Rodney’s brain. Ronon watched his eyelids flutter open. “Oh,” he said faintly. “Like that.”

That would have been the right moment to leave, except that he couldn’t leave. Damn, already he couldn’t leave. Ronon laid down at Rodney’s side and drew him close. “We can start pretending on Monday, okay?” he said against Rodney’s shoulder.

“Oh, God,” Rodney said. “This is a whole new and terrible way to fuck up my life. This is– People say I’m paranoid, you know, but the strange thing is that hardly any of the things I panic about ever happen, and yet there’s always some perfectly awful thing that never occurred to me, just waiting until I least suspect– “

“On behalf of all the perfectly awful fuck-ups in your life,” Ronon said, “you don’t mind shutting up, do you?”

Rodney moved his free arm across his body to stroke Ronon’s hair gently. “God, if I’d only met you a year ago.”

That was a year Ronon would have been happy to skip over, too. Although this year was shaping up to have challenges of its own.

*

He avoided Rodney for three days after that, which wasn’t hard, with the team grounded and Rodney spending all his time in the labs. It felt like at least thirteen. He even went to the infirmary to look in on Sheppard only when he knew Rodney would be somewhere else. He never stayed long, because they were keeping Sheppard knocked out almost all the time, and for a while it was interesting to sit around and watch his scales turn dusty-looking and start to curl up at the edges, but not for very long.

He came in once by pure chance when Sheppard was conscious; Rodney was there, too, which he shouldn’t have been. If he would stick to his own schedule, it would be a lot easier for both of them to pretend the other didn’t exist. Ronon couldn’t even sit in the other chair, because Rodney was using it for a footrest while he worked on his datapad, and Ronon wasn’t about to ask for it.

“Heyyyy,” Sheppard said. They had raised his bed so he was propped up, the IV tubes still in his arms and most of the scales still sticking to his body, but his eyes had gone back to normal and he was smiling the same broad, vague smile that he smiled when he was tired or a little drunk, the one that made him look somewhat simple-minded, if still unfortunately attractive. “You!”

“Colonel,” he said. “You’re awake.”

“Space. Red. Kinda sticky....”

“If not terribly lucid,” Rodney agreed. “He’s on enough painkillers to override being boiled in oil, but that’s Carson for you, he’s never met a pill he didn’t like. I keep trying to convince him to investigate more holistic approaches to health, but no, it’s just pour this beaker of bat wings or God knows what down your throat and call me in the morning, if it didn’t make your head fall off. Nothing against Carson, you know, but if we could get our mad scientist quotient supplemented by a decent chiropractor around here, I feel it would be excellent for morale, and I for one would enjoy occasionally seeing a doctor I don’t suspect of fabricating reasons to alter my DNA.”

“Rodney is uncomfortable.” Sheppard pronounced the word slowly, as if he knew it was going to take extra effort on his part. “Oh! Do that thing. Rodney, he does a thing. You’ll love it.”

Rodney’s mouth twisted up and his eyes flashed, but he didn’t look up from his typing. “I very much doubt I will.” Ronon cut a _fuck you, too_ look in his direction, which Rodney didn’t even seem to notice. Sometimes he wondered why everyone didn’t like Rodney as much as his own team did, but most of the time the reasons were pretty clear.

“No, no. No, no, no. It’s great. Backrub – blowjob – _bye, bye, Miss American Pie_ – “ The last part, before Rodney could lean over and clamp his hand over Sheppard’s mouth, was distinctly louder and sounded like it was meant to have some kind of tune. He hoped that was the fault of the drugs, and not how Sheppard actually sang.

“Okay, two rules. No come-ons, and no singing.”

“You said one rule,” Sheppard whined when Rodney moved his hand away.

“Well, now it’s two.”

Sheppard reached out and put his hand – the more human one, Ronon was grateful to see – in Ronon’s hand. “Hail Mary!” he said intently. “Catch. Handoff. Teamwork, right? The Dukes of Hazzard, Mulder and Scully, Han and Chewie!”

“Abbott and Costello,” Rodney grumbled. “Shaggy and Scooby.”

For a moment, Sheppard sounded eerily competent when he said, “I’m for shit like this. You take care of things for me til I get back, okay?”

“I don’t have the rank– “

“No, the personal things. Do the. Tend, right? Just be good, I don’t wanna worry. He used to drive me fucking crazy, all uptight, everything’s a big disaster, I thought I’d have to kill him. I was gonna make it look like an accident. Fucked him instead, he’s a _lot_ nicer now. Do all that stuff, make him happy, it’s good for him.”

“I– “

“That’s an order, soldier!”

Ronon dropped his hand, just as Rodney slammed his datapad down on the arm of the chair and said, “All right, that’s _quite_ enough. Would you get out of here? He was perfectly calm until you came in.”

He resisted the urge to say _I’ll leave, but not because you tell me to_. If he hadn’t still been feeling sorry for Rodney he might have said it, but he’d been watching Rodney’s face go bloodless and pale at _fucked him instead_. So he just left.

*

He haunted Rodney’s quarters until an absolutely indecent hour, and then he went up to his office. It wasn’t his job, no matter what Sheppard said while he was on drugs, to take care of Rodney, but somebody obviously had to keep him from....

Well, he would have done it anyway, probably.

“Nobody said you could come in here,” Rodney said without looking up from his computer. “This is _my_ office, I need mental and physical privacy, and oh, by the way, I am absolutely not going to have sex with you because Colonel Sheppard _ordered_ you to make sure I got my regular servicing, the whole idea is completely insulting, and it’s all in his head anyway, because yes, fine, I’m a moody person, it comes from being complex and passionate, beneath my cool exterior, but I assure you the quality of my mood is dependent on a whole lot more than how recently I’ve– “

He’d missed the sound of Rodney’s ranting. He was so fucked. “I’m not here to have sex with you, McKay.”

Rodney looked up, startled. “You’re not?”

“ _No_. Maybe you think I fetch whenever he throws a stick, but I don’t.”

“Oh. Well...good for you. You’re not good for him, you know, he was bossy enough before you came along, and soon he’s going to be expecting all of us to– “

“Could you just stop _talking_ for a second?” Rodney opened his mouth, and then closed it. Ronon waited, and then it dawned on him that he’d won. That was so intriguing that he had trouble remembering what he had come here to say. Right. “He’s going to be there for weeks, maybe months, and as they ease off the medication, he’s going to be bored a lot. I thought we should – work something out. So there’s somebody up there to sit with him, but – but only one of us. Just to make it...not so awkward.”

“You’re really not here to have sex with me?” Rodney blurted.

And no, he really wasn’t, he really hadn’t come here for that and actually for the opposite of that, he’d wanted to keep Rodney as far from him as possible until things stopped being so.... 

He could never remember quite how he got on his knees in front of Rodney’s chair on wheels, his face tilted up so Rodney could lean down and kiss him with his fingers in his hair and Ronon’s fingers pressing into Rodney’s thighs, but the good news was that Rodney had thought to order the blinds scrolled shut first, in case of insomniac lab techs outside.

“I missed you,” Rodney breathed.

At least Rodney had work to fall back on; Ronon hadn’t realized until it was gone that the team was all he really had on Atlantis, so that missing Sheppard and Rodney had the force of being in suspended animation – like his time in the Wraith cryo-chamber, except with more to hope for than an agonizing death. Hoping for something made it worse, almost. He could hardly say any of that, though, so instead he said, “If we do this– “ Rodney cut him off with more kisses, and Ronon had to grab his arms under the elbows and push him back. “If we do this, it’s just until the Colonel comes back.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re in love with him. Do you really think sleeping with me is going to do anything but delay what you’re hoping he’ll roll over and say to you someday?”

It was only an instinct, but Rodney’s eyes went wide and he stopped breathing, so Ronon knew it was a clean shot. Rodney cleared his throat and said, “He might – he might never – I don’t think he feels that way about me.”

“Doesn’t matter. That’s what you want.”

“I want you,” Rodney said, and the strain in his voice, the quiet rising note of desperation – so perfect, it sounded exactly....

So fucked. Why was he always attracted to the ones who could _almost_ feel the same way back? “No, you don’t,” Ronon said gently. “You’re sleep-deprived, self-loathing, and whatever else, and you’re in love with him. I can’t be your shallow– “

“Shut up, don’t say it! I can’t believe I ever said those things to you, I didn’t mean it, what the fuck are you doing listening to me? Dex, you know – you have to know I never meant....”

“I know. Look, it’s okay. I like you both, okay? I’ve – I’ve been missing both of you.”

“Come home with me.”

“Listen, I’m trying to tell you something. I don’t want anything. I never...had a lot of stuff, and I don’t need it. All I really want is.... I want to stay here. In Atlantis, on the team.”

“Of course you’re staying!”

“Will you _listen_? I’ve been – I’ve been stupid lately. I tended him, which I never should have done, and I let – I talked myself into – thinking things about you and me that.... I’m saying, that part has to be over now. If we do this, it has to be just...to get us through– You’re lonely without him, I’m bored without a mission to go on. Those are good reasons. We’re part of the same squadron, so we look out for each other, we fix each other’s problems. That has to be why.”

Rodney narrowed his eyes at him. “I thought you said it was too complicated to sleep with someone on your– “

“Forget that.” Damn, count on Rodney to remember more than he was supposed to. “This is the deal. You want it or not?”

“Well, I don’t like the deal. I think when John’s up to it again, we should all– “

“This _is_ the deal. I don’t care if you like it.”

“Well, I _don’t_. And it’s insane to ask me to make binding decisions about my future while you’re on your knees. It’s duress! Nothing I say right now counts anyway, because all I can think of is that we can’t break up before you’ve ever gone down on me. If you want me to be at all rational about this, I’m going to have to get you out of my system first, so the faster we get to the sex, the sooner we have a chance of sorting all this out to your satisfaction. How’s _that_ deal grab you?”

Ronon wasn’t stupid. Rodney was playing for time, thinking he could talk Ronon out of this with sex and insults and deep, sweet kisses and babble and maybe some more of that Kraft Dinner. That kind of thing probably worked on Sheppard, but if there was one thing Ronon knew how to do, it was keep his eye on a target. “I’m not going to change my mind,” he said, because with an enemy you respected, you gave fair warning.

“Yes, yes, I know, you’re only my interim boyfriend, I promise I won’t get attached. I’ve barely even named you, all right? Hmph, it might even be fun. Who hasn’t fantasized about dumping the center on prom night?”

“Nobody,” Ronon said, beginning to smile. “Who’s the center?”

“We have the rest of our natural lives, however admittedly short those are likely to be, to discuss hockey. Sex now, all right?”

_Get you out of my system_ , Ronon thought as he eased the zipper down on Rodney’s pants. That sounded scientific. Sweated out, like a bad fever. Like something had gotten in your bloodstream that was too dangerous to ignore.


	5. Prime

Because he was a good person, John Sheppard’s first job after getting sprung from the hospital was to straighten out that whole disturbing mess with Teyla. Because he was at least a fair-to-middling commander, his second trip was through his office to read as many of Caldwell’s memos as he could get through before the boredom set in. He almost didn’t get out of the office that day, since Elizabeth cornered him and vented a kind of disturbing amount of anger about Caldwell. “Well, I’ll look everything over and make some decisions,” Sheppard said diplomatically. He’d hoped to be able to just rubber-stamp everything – it wasn’t like Caldwell was some kind of moron, after all – but given Elizabeth’s mood, he thought he’d better look as if he were in charge, here. Or more to the point, like he was at least as interested in being in charge, here, as he was in fucking off to find his boyfriend and get his brains screwed out.

Two weeks in bed was a pretty bad deal when you spent most of it celibate and partially chitinous.

Which brought John to his third job.

It would have been easier to accomplish if Rodney had been answering his damn headset. That was normal when he was working in the closed labs, but not only was he not down in them, none of his staff had seen him for at least an hour, which was great news for the staff, but bad news for John. He must have looked as irritated as he felt, because two different people came up to him surreptitiously and advised him to try the south-10 control corridor, where engineering had been doing upgrades for the past two days. Rodney did love to go check up on other people’s work, particularly Zelenka’s.

He wasn’t there, though, and by that time John had walked all the way down to the 10 block, and although John had all the faith in the world in his miraculous powers of recovery, his system was a little depressed from all the lying around and...debugging. He had to sit down on the suspension bridge and catch his breath, and Rodney still didn’t have his goddamn headset on. John closed his eyes and fantasized: Rodney comes around the corner, sees him sitting there, starts giving him hell for doing too much too soon, takes him by the hands to pull him up, and then John kisses him, not too hard, not a fuck-me-now kiss, but deep, until Rodney’s knees buckle and he lets himself be pushed up against that complicated-looking piece of equipment there, and John says.... 

Fuck, you know, the thing was that John never knew quite what to _say_ to Rodney, but more and more lately he’d felt like he should say something, like they were at that point in their relationship where...something needed to be said. _Did you miss me as much as I missed you?_ or _Hey, we’re good together, don’t you think?_ – no, not that last one, that was awful.

Anyway, the important part was that Rodney was gonna have to bring his ass down here to the south-10 and give John a hand up, because he was kind of stuck sitting where he was, and that was pathetic.

Someone eventually did come by and offer him a hand, but it was only some kid John had never met from engineering. “Thanks,” John said once he was on his feet. “I just came down looking for Dr. McKay, and I got a little light-headed.”

“You missed him,” the engineer said, already paying more attention to his data-pad than to John. “I think I saw him taking the transporter down, though, so I’d probably check at floor-level. There’s not much between here and there that would be interesting.”

Feeling oddly disappointed that Rodney hadn’t magically known to come looking for John, he almost decided to forget the whole thing and see if they’d let him into the mess hall a few minutes early, seeing as how he was a heroically wounded officer and all that. He sighed to himself as he swiped his hand across the down panel on the transporter; maybe the thing he was looking for to say to Rodney could be _Hi, I like you and I’m really pretty easy_. No, it should probably involve something Rodney didn’t already know.

Rodney was on ground-level. John wasn’t entirely sure how he knew that, since he was stuck and pretty much invisible between the wall and Ronon, but John recognized him anyway. He had one hand up the back of Ronon’s sweater and the other cradling the back of Ronon’s neck and was making muffled, desperate noises into his mouth; Ronon was standing at a painful-looking angle, with his shoulders slouched and his neck bent low to put his mouth on a level with Rodney’s, and he had one hand braced on the wall and the other holding his thigh up against Ronon’s hip while he stood between Rodney’s legs and let Rodney squirm against him.

The interesting thing to John – well, the interesting thing to John’s brain was that it didn’t look like a one-off kind of thing. They were kissing slowly, tangled up together like they had nowhere in the galaxy to go and were just enjoying the ride. Rodney’s hand kept moving up and down Ronon’s back lazily, as if he were petting him. In spite of the awkwardness of his angle, Ronon seemed to have settled into it and he wasn’t shifting around trying to find a better one. They looked like they were all set to stay like this for a long time, and what that said to John was that they’d been doing this long enough to get used to it.

Ronon broke off and said something, too low for John to make out – that boy could really stand to learn how to enunciate – and Rodney said, “We would probably miss dinner....”

“Order Chinese,” John said. He surprised himself with the evil little thrill it gave him to see them jump like that. “That’s what I always used to do when I was trying to skip the dating parts and stay home all night fucking. Oh, hey, wait. Nobody good delivers out here....”

“John!” Rodney gasped. “What are you – I didn’t know you – “

“Doc said yesterday he didn’t know how long it would be,” Ronon said, sounding neither reproachful nor startled. Just filling in with some sense on Rodney’s behalf, since Rodney was still stammering helplessly.

“Well, I got healthy enough to be a real pain in the ass for the infirmary, so they gave me my walking papers.” Ronon had moved aside, but not a lot; he’d put one arm around Rodney’s waist almost protectively and was standing at a ninety-degree angle to him, their shoulders together, so that when John stepped up into Rodney’s space he was butted up against Ronon’s chest as well. John ignored that for the moment and fingered the collar of Rodney’s shirt while he brushed a soft kiss over Rodney’s mouth. “‘Hey, Colonel,’” he prompted, “‘it’s great to see you up and around and so incredibly handsome again.’”

“Oh,” Rodney said stupidly, and then he put a hand behind John’s head and said, “ _John_ ,” and the way his voice cracked made up for a lot of intellectually substandard bantering in John’s book. John kissed him again.

Rodney was still breathing raggedly when he moved his mouth away, but his voice sounded respectably authoritative as he said, “We are absolutely not going to have a threesome in the transporter bay.”

John grinned against the side of his face, flicking his eyes in Ronon’s direction. “I didn’t know we were going to have a threesome at all.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, of course that’s what you were about to ask for. I know you.”

“Hi, Ronon,” he said.

“Colonel. How’s your arm?”

“Mammalian. You were kinda making time with my boyfriend while I was laid up, weren’t you?”

Ronon tilted his head, one degree cooler than a shrug. “He looked lonely.”

He meant to be clever a little more, but something about Ronon’s eyes stopped him – or something about looking into Ronon’s eyes, suddenly being so close to him again. It was weird, and probably didn’t reflect too well on John, but he hadn’t been thinking much about Ronon these past couple of weeks. John was pretty sure he’d been on Ronon’s mind. He slid his hand over Ronon’s chest and said, “Thanks for taking care of him for me, then. Always know I can count on you.”

“Yes,” Ronon said seriously. “Always.”

Rodney pressed a hard kiss to John’s temple and left his mouth pressed there against John’s skin as he said, “God, the two of you and your manly understatement. Fine, I’ll be the one to say it out loud, all right? We should have sex together. The two of you should have sex with each other and you should both absolutely have sex with me, and this should happen tonight, preferably right after dinner.”

“We could eat in your room,” Ronon said hopefully.

“Much as I appreciate your faith in me, my food supply is not endless, and I would like to start saving some of it for actual emergencies.”

Ronon made a soft, disappointed noise and leaned in toward Rodney’s ear. “I like it when your mouth tastes like grape soda,” he rumbled, and John had to practically hold Rodney up against the wall.

This was going to be the best welcome-back party anyone had ever thrown for him.

*

They had the transporter ride to plan a strategy; Rodney went ahead to his quarters to scare up some of his emergency food, John ran by his place for a six-pack and some extra lube, and Ronon went on a mission to the mess hall, because John knew a lot of unscrupulous bastards in Atlantis, but none who ever seemed able to make it past the MPs with as much stolen food in their pockets as Ronon Dex.

“How are we going to do this?” Ronon asked as he slathered butter – the pats had melted to the perfect consistency in the pockets of Ronon’s coat – on his half-ear of corn. He and John both reached for the same can of beer, and John had to deploy his very best _but I’m still so fragile from my near-death experience_ look. Ronon narrowed his eyes doubtfully. John switched to his _unhand that beer, soldier_ look, and Ronon huffed unhappily and leaned back in his chair.

“So things haven’t changed much while I’ve been out of commission, huh?” John said, and pitched another can across the table for Ronon to catch.

Ronon shrugged as he eased it carefully open. “Thought maybe you didn’t want me drinking.”

“Why’d you think I brought it over?”

Ronon finished swallowing his beer and said, “I can stay hard longer if I haven’t been drinking.” Rodney plucked the can out of his hand and slid it back across the table toward John.

“All right,” John said, throwing a wry look in Rodney’s direction, “that’s one vote for how we’re doing this.”

“It’s up to you,” Rodney said, and touched his knee lightly under the table. John smiled at him, and he suddenly looked embarrassed and fascinated by his Jell-O. “We should have a rule,” he said. “The last person to practically die in a massively unpleasant way gets to pick his favorite position.”

“We need a rule?” John said. Rodney stopped eating, but kept his eyes intently on the Jell-O cup.

After a silence, Ronon stood up, saying, “Look, this isn’t right. Ask me again some other time.”

“Where are you going?” John said.

Ronon picked his coat off the back of his chair. “You two should be alone tonight.”

John looked toward Rodney for some idea how to go forward. Rodney was watching Ronon go with kind of an awful look on his face, but he didn’t seem about to say anything. John caught his eye and jerked his head toward Ronon. “Go get him,” he hissed when Rodney kept hesitating. After another second of apparently trying to decide if John was serious or not, he jumped up and rushed to catch Ronon before he opened the door.

John kicked his feet up on Ronon’s empty chair and watched them, holding their heads close together in low conversation. Rodney had his hand on Ronon’s arm and Ronon’s other hand kept twitching up nervously to twist one of his dreds behind his ear. John grinned into his beer; when he wasn’t being crazy samurai-Terminator guy, Ronon was kind of a fifteen-year-old girl. It was cute.

It occurred to him a little belatedly that with _him_ , Ronon was crazy samurai-Terminator guy, and he was kind of cute...with Rodney. Interesting.

He started to watch a little more carefully then. Rodney talked up at him intently. Ronon nodded a few times, his hands stirring his coat restlessly as if he didn’t know what to do with them. Both of them glanced over at John at odd intervals, and he tried to look easygoing and nonthreatening. Ronon finally nodded decisively and clapped his hand on Rodney’s shoulder; Rodney picked it up, kissed the joint of his thumb, and started back to the table with Ronon following along behind.

“I dearly hope that’s the one and only freak-out we’ll be having tonight,” Rodney said. John held up his beer to share with him, and Rodney looked at him like he was criminally insane. Right, Canadian.

“I wasn’t freaking out,” Ronon said. “I was trying to do the right thing.”

“Ronon, don’t worry about it,” John said, looking at Rodney as he said it. “You’re not going to split us up. Right?”

Rodney’s smile started slowly, but was idiotic and adorable within moments. He put his fingers in John’s hair, ignoring his protesting noises, and tipped his face up to kiss him. “Oh, stop it,” he said when the kiss was over. “You’ve been lying down for two weeks, it’s a mess anyway.”

John stroked the inside of Rodney’s wrist with his thumb and said, “Let me watch him fuck you.” Rodney nodded, wide-eyed, and they both looked over at Ronon, who was taking off his coat again, and then his sweater – signaling, in John’s opinion, that the dinner portions of the date were officially over.

*

That fatigue that he’d been fighting off in the 10 block hit him again the second John laid down on the bed, and he truly began to appreciate the brilliance of his own plan. Sex – not to knock the regular version in any way, but sex that didn’t involve any effort at all on your part was turning out to kick ass.

Ronon was out of his clothes before he made it to the bed. John had never actually seen him naked before, and the experience was somewhat bittersweet; John could do crunches for ten hours a day and he wouldn’t be ripped like that, but on the other hand, the big reason to get ripped like that was so you could get laid, and that hadn’t been a big problem in John’s life lately and didn’t look like it was going to start. In fact, if you could get laid by someone who _was_ ripped like that without going to all the trouble of getting that way yourself, what was the down-side there?

He sat on the edge of the bed, angled slightly so that his back wasn’t entirely to John. Rodney stood between his legs and smiled almost shyly down at him, resting his hands on Ronon’s shoulders with one finger stroking lightly over Ronon’s tattoo. “I don’t know if there’s room for three people in this bed,” Rodney said. “It’s not all that comfortable for two.”

“We can be friendly,” Ronon said, beginning to strip Rodney’s clothes off of him. “I’m friendly.”

“I’ve been called many things in my life....”

“You’re friendly, too,” Ronon rumbled. “You’re very friendly.”

“Yes, well, you’re– “ Rodney began, but the conversation was cut short when he put his hand to Ronon’s cheek and Ronon yanked him down by the arms into a passionate kiss. Rodney slid his hands into Ronon’s hair and let Ronon finish unfastening his pants and pushing them down so Rodney could step out of them.

John slid as far as he could to the side of the bed so that Ronon could lie down with Rodney on top of him, the two of them still kissing desperately. “I think we have this backwards,” Ronon said when he got a breath.

“This works for me.”

“See, there you go, being friendly again.” They were smiling broadly at each other, the tips of their noses brushing, their hands roaming lazily up and down each other’s sides. John had never seen any sign of this between them before; maybe he’d missed a lot these past couple of weeks. “I’m going to move you,” Ronon warned. “Trust me.” Rodney nodded.

Ronon pushed them both up and rearranged them carefully so that they were both on their sides, Ronon spooned against Rodney’s back. By rolling up to his side, John could keep from losing his spot on the bed entirely, and he wound up nose-to-nose with Rodney. “Hi, there,” he said. “Remember me?”

“I haven’t forgotten you,” Rodney protested. John propped himself up on his hand so that he could get a better view of Ronon as he lubed his fingers and pushed Rodney’s leg forward. Rodney draped it across John’s legs and caught his breath as Ronon’s fingers began to disappear inside him. His lips were parted like he was just waiting to be kissed, so John kissed him. Rodney brought a hand up to tug affectionately on John’s hair, and when the kiss broke off he smiled and said, “You can’t be patient for two minutes?”

This, John was sure, was where he should say that thing that he should say. While he was still desperately hoping it would spring to mind, Rodney gasped and grabbed onto John’s arm like a vise. John’s eyes flicked upward, and there was Ronon, pressed up against Rodney’s back with his lips in Rodney’s hair and his hand smoothing up Rodney’s thigh to his hip. Ronon caught John’s look and smiled, his mouth hidden but his eyes crinkling up in pleasure, and it was weird to feel the rhythm of Ronon’s slow, deliberate fucking through the rocking of Rodney’s body against his. John kissed him again, making him whimper, but not driving him enough out of his mind to prevent him from starting to unbutton John’s shirt for him.

Ronon’s hand slid around the front of Rodney’s hips and his fingers settled loosely around the base of Rodney’s cock, then slid back to fondle his balls. “Sheppard,” he said, his voice steady if a little bit hoarse, “you like to suck?” Rodney whined low in his throat and pulled the last few buttons of John’s shirt roughly open.

“I like it okay,” John said, as casually as he could manage it. “Rodney, you up for that?”

“John, how smart am I?”

“Very, very smart.”

“And how stupid would a person have to be to turn that offer down?”

“Much stupider than you,” John assured him, and began kissing his way from Rodney’s collarbone down toward his cock.

Totally weird, to feel Rodney getting fucked through the nudge of his hips against John’s fist and the head of his cock against the roof of John’s mouth. He could feel Rodney’s body quivering helplessly, unable to moderate between the two different kinds of sensation racing through his body. For a second John almost felt sorry for him; the not terribly latent control-freak in Rodney must be going insane from this, with John and Ronon holding all the power, taking him only as far and as fast as they wanted him to go.

And then on the other hand, really not sorry for him at all.

Rodney’s groans of pleasure began to resolve themselves into pleading, a rough, repetitive, “Please, please, please, yes, please, more, now,” where each word synched up naturally with the steady rhythm Ronon was setting. John slid his hand over the inside of Rodney’s solid thigh and swirled his tongue around the crown of Rodney’s cock, trying to fly casual so it would be like an accident, sort of, when his fingers came brushing up against the sensitive ridge of skin where Ronon’s cock was rubbing in and out of Rodney’s ass. He’d never felt that before, that odd sense of two bodies being joined and yet still totally separate, moving against each other for the perfect friction that you could never get with your own fingers, that only someone else could really make _work_ for you. It was obviously working for Rodney.

Rodney went tense for just a second, and then screwed himself back hard on Ronon’s dick while he grabbed for John’s shoulder and said, “This is absolutely no time to play around, will you just suck already?” So John did, although he left his free hand lingering somewhere around Rodney’s balls, where he could feel the vibrations in his fingertips.

After Rodney came in his mouth, John rolled over on his back; his legs were sprawled off the foot of the bed – did the Ancients never get any play or what? What was _with_ these beds in Atlantis? – and his dick was becoming uncomfortably hard inside his khakis. He shook the shirt that had been hanging tenaciously off of his wrists loose and tipped his head back to grin, upside down, at Rodney, who still looked like he had a few circuits blown. “Now, you see, I’m not sure this fulfills the letter of my request. I could hardly see anything.”

“I didn’t know we were putting on a show,” Ronon said, his voice muffled against Rodney’s neck. From the tense, trembling way he was holding himself against Rodney’s back, John was pretty sure he was keeping himself on pause for round two, and that thought alone was unbearably hot.

“Oh, yes, it’s all about Colonel Sheppard, hadn’t you heard?” Rodney said. There was just no excuse for being able to summon that snide tone of voice when you were still all sweaty and dazed-looking from getting sucked and fucked simultaneously. Rodney’s snippiness was basically a force of nature now.

Ronon shifted so that he was leaning up over Rodney’s ear, and something about the change of angle shook a noise out of Rodney that was indeterminately pleased and pained. “I’ve never fucked Sheppard,” he said, a hypnotic lilt to his voice that was almost a purr. “Only you.”

“It’s _not_ all about me?” John said. “And here I thought you guys had remembered my birthday....”

“It’s not your birthday,” Rodney said.

“You don’t know. It might be.”

“Eleven-five-sixty-seven. Adds up to 83. All prime.”

“Awww,” he said, and he meant it. He’d be willing to bet a thousand bucks that Rodney was not the sort of guy who was usually very keen with sentimental dates; in fact, he’d throw in another twenty if Rodney hadn’t lost at least one girlfriend because of it. “Now, what was I wearing the first time we met?”

“Oh, shut up and change places with me.”

It was a little bit harder than John would have liked to drag himself back up the bed, and then there was a logistical situation when they couldn’t seem to get back to a position where all three of them would fit on the bed, at least not while John and Rodney were both trying to get John’s pants off. “Oh, to hell with this,” Rodney finally snapped, and got off the bed. “What kind of boring sex life the Ancients had I don’t know, but I refuse to throw my back out because of it.”

“I was just thinking that,” John said. “Well, not the part about my back.”

“I’ve got him,” Ronon said, and he seemed to mean that entirely literally, since he slipped his arms around John’s body and pulled him physically onto his knees and elbows, adjusting his hands down to John’s arms and nudging behind him with his hard-on. It was still a little slick, but John was grateful when Ronon anticipated his request and cracked the bottle of lube open again.

“Okay, just in case you need it, here we go,” John said. “You are going to fuck me hard. I _like hard, hard is not a problem for me at all. I’m probably going to make a lot of noise, and you are _not_ going to keep stopping and asking me if I’m all right, because I really hate that. Trust me, I’m fine. You’re just going to keep going – hard, did I mention that part? – until I come. So it’s really just that simple – oh, _shit__.” Ronon went in with two fingers at once, making John’s body surge forward without his approval, and he turned to glare at Rodney, who was fucking laughing at him.

“Please, it was hysterical,” Rodney said. He’d put his pants on and dragged a chair over to the side of the bed like he was tailgating at a football game. “The great John Sheppard, a lover _and_ a fighter, begging for mercy before the finger-fucking is even over?”

“Startled me, that’s all. And excuse me, are you planning to get some journal articles read or something? This is still a threesome; why are you putting your clothes back on?”

“In case someone wants to sit in this chair, ever again?” Rodney looked a little disturbed that John might not have found that obvious. He wondered if Rodney would start bringing his own chair along to John’s place now; never know where John’s have been, after all.

The great thing about Ronon was that he liked to do what John asked him to do and he also liked to show John up, so when John said _fuck me hard_ , Ronon didn’t play around. John could feel it everywhere, under his fingernails, in his elbows where they dug into Rodney’s prescription mattress, in his fucking eyelashes, a fresh wave of _oh, fucking God, good_ with every thrust and drag across his prostate, and of course Ronon could find his prostate in two seconds flat, of course there was nothing physical that Ronon couldn’t do better than anyone else. That was extremely fucking annoying some of the time, but not right now.

His neck wouldn’t work to lift his head up, but John could look around his arm and get a pretty decent view of Rodney, who’d put one foot up on the frame of his bed and had his pants open and his hand inside. “Having...fun?” John managed.

“You look like you’re having enough fun for the both of us,” Rodney said, and John might have had something to say to that if he’d been able to manage more than two-word sentences. 

The sweat was beginning to drip into his eyes, and he lowered his head to rub it away against the back of his wrist. Ronon shifted up, leaning over him to growl closer to his ear, “Don’t break.” 

“Thought I...told you...don’t check on me.”

“Thought you told me not to stop,” Ronon said, and shoved in so hard that John almost choked on his own air supply.

Apparently that was what it took to make Rodney not care about possible irreparable spinal damage anymore. He pretty much fit on the bed, with some creative overlapping so that one of John’s arms was braced on the other side of him, almost sheltering Rodney with his bent, straining body. Rodney touched his cheek and said, “You’re so obscene. Don’t they kick you out of the Army just for being _you_ , isn’t it against some kind of rule?”

“The _Army_?”

“Whatever.” Rodney pulled his face down, and in spite of the fact that there was little enough oxygen getting to John’s brain as it was he gave in to the kiss, because it was pretty much a given at this point that his death options were gruesome-Wraith-related-disaster or blissful-orgasm-related-stroke-out.

Not that it needed to be said, but orgasm-related-stroke-out was way ahead in the polls.

He didn’t think his kissing technique was much to write home about by the time he could feel the hot-oil sizzle and burn of said orgasm catch inside his stomach and start to spread. He was just making noise into Rodney’s mouth at that point, wet, sloppy gasps and cries with Rodney’s tongue pushing back against his and Rodney’s fingertips digging bruises into his temple. Ronon hooked his arms around John’s thighs and dragged him back, destroying whatever semblance of balance John had had before and fucking him not in hard, dangerous slides now, but sharp, shattering jabs of his hips, the full length of his cock buried inside John and not going anywhere.

“Oh, God, God, John,” Rodney was gasping half-intelligibly, and the vibrations of his tongue in John’s mouth matched the hot trembling that had taken over John’s body. It was a good thing John wasn’t the control-freak here, because even he had to admit that it was a weird feeling, wanting to explode out of your own skin like some kind of insane Japanese movie-monster from the sheer force of your pleasure but not being able to do more than squirm and lick Rodney’s mouth.

Rodney must really be nuts about him, John realized, because he let John collapse on top of him when Ronon let him fall, even though John’s chest and stomach were liberally wet with come and Rodney was normally completely freakish about anything gummy in texture on his skin. “The Army?” John said again, sounding as drunk and wrung-out as he felt.

“Excuse me. Sometimes I get my vast array of sexy, dark-haired, uniformed lovers confused.”

“You like blondes.”

“I’m growing more versatile. It’s true what they say: travel is a broadening experience.”

It was easy to feel the change as Ronon got off the bed. John rolled gratefully into the empty space, because he really did not have enough room to melt into the wide puddle of useless skin and nerves that he wanted to be right now. “It’s good you’re okay,” Ronon said, slithering into those leather pants much more comfortably and easily than anyone had a right to slither into leather.

“If you’re taking off already,” John said, “do you think you could say something that makes it look a little less like you’re just the kind of guy who fucks and runs?”

“I thought I just did.” Ronon quirked his eyebrow and added, “Are you giving me that look because you think I’m being impolite, or because you’re jealous that I can walk right now?”

“Hey, buddy, I could walk,” John flat-out lied. “I could walk if there was somewhere I needed to go, but I’m fine right here, thanks.”

“Oh, my God,” Rodney muttered, brushing at his chest. “This is disgusting.”

“Don’t go,” John said, and it came out sounding irritable and high-handed, which wasn’t what he intended. It came out sounding like some kind of fucking order.

Ronon hesitated, then continued dressing. “No room.”

A quick glance over at Rodney revealed not much help coming from that direction; Rodney was staring at the ceiling like he was in a soundproof booth with no idea there was even a conversation going on at all. Coward.

For a second he thought Ronon was in such a hurry that he’d leave without his shoes, but he was only walking into the bathroom. John heard the water running, and a moment later a wet cloth landed with a noisy slap on Rodney’s stomach. He yipped in surprise, but once he realized what it was, he sent a look of pure gratitude up at Ronon and started cleaning himself up. Ronon had his shoes on by the time Rodney handed the washcloth off to John.

“A kiss goodnight is customary among Earth people,” Rodney said dryly as Ronon turned in the direction of the door.

Ronon didn’t seem terrifically keen on that idea, but he did turn around slowly and walk back to the bed. He leaned all the way across Rodney first and kissed John with amazing sweetness for a guy who fucked so ruthlessly dirty, his dreds all over John’s skin like vines. Then he backed off and started to kiss Rodney. He hesitated with his mouth just two or three inches above Rodney’s, until Rodney lifted his head himself to close the gap. Ronon put his hand behind Rodney’s head to support it, and Rodney slid both his hands into Ronon’s hair and kissed back like it was a direct continuation of the long, luxurious kiss John had interrupted earlier that evening.

When he started to move away, Rodney grabbed his arm and held it tightly, fixing him with a pissed-off look that made Ronon smile rather than duck for cover. “We talked about this,” Ronon reminded him, disentangling himself and lowering Rodney carefully back to the bed.

“I don’t recall coming to an agreement on the subject.”

“We don’t really need to agree.”

“You are the most obstinate bastard I ever met.”

“Including yourself?”

“No. So if you had any sense, you’d agree with me now and save us some time.”

“Except you’re wrong.”

“I can count the number of times I’ve been wrong– “

“This isn’t physics, McKay.”

“Believe me, I know! If this were anything that made the slightest bit of rational goddamned sense....” Rodney subsided into wounded frustration, as if the presence of uncertainty in the universe were a personal slight delivered by an irresponsible God who would be getting an earful from Rodney McKay in the hereafter.

“I know,” Ronon said gently, with a strange little smile hovering around his mouth. “It got complicated.”

“Dex. Don’t go. Not like this.”

Ronon touched Rodney’s lips with one finger. “No room.” He looked over at John then and crossed his wrists over his chest and lowered his head slightly – some kind of salute, John guessed – and walked away.

“Goddamit!” Rodney barked at the closed door behind him. “What is _wrong_ with you military men? You’ve never heard of problem-solving, it’s all just advance, retreat, screw it or shoot it? It’s the twenty-first century, dammit, we should have one or two slightly more sophisticated tools at our disposal to– “

“Rodney. Did you just get dumped?”

Rodney flung his arm over his eyes. “I suppose that’s one _particularly negative_ interpretation.”

“Oh, okay,” John said. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he slipped his arm underneath Rodney, but it worked out the usual way, with Rodney rolling over when coaxed and half draping himself across John. “Why don’t you spin it another way for me, Mr. Positivity?”

“That’s Dr. Positivity to you,” Rodney grumbled, his hand straying across John’s chest. “I suppose if I were in your position, I might take note of the fact that I’ve apparently been delivered to your doorstep with a bright red bow tied around my dick. It must be Christmas on Sateda.”

“That bothers you.”

“What, being passed around like – like one of those tins of popcorn, with the adorable pictures of children and sleighs painted on– “

“People thinking we’re a couple.”

Rodney hummed indecisively in his ear and busied himself rolling John’s nipple between his fingers. “It’s...of concern, let’s just say. For your sake more than for mine.”

“Rodney, I keep telling you, I’m not going to get fired. Nobody else wants my crappy job.” He kissed Rodney’s hair lightly and added, “Of course, what do I know? I didn’t think anyone else wanted my asshole boyfriend, either.”

Rodney elbowed him hard, which John took without complaint; some jokes were too perfect to pass up, even knowing that you’d bear the brunt of righteous revenge for them. “He likes you, too, you know.”

“He shot me. Twice.”

“I’m fairly certain that’s how he expresses affection.” Since John was fairly certain about that, too, he didn’t have anything to add. “Do you want to take a shower?”

“I’m not going to make it to the shower,” John admitted. “I feel pretty....”

Immediately, Rodney was up on one elbow. “What? Do you hurt anywhere? Your arm?”

“Pretty beat. Just tired, Rodney, relax. Tired is actually a good sign; I didn’t feel tired at all when I was....” John made a vague gesture with his fingers at the level of his forehead, meant to suggest antennae.

“You were not a bug. I wish people would stop saying that.”

“I was producing their pheromones.”

“I know, and can I tell you how amusing I find that, in retrospect? You are alive today because of your overwhelming sex appeal.”

“Yeah, I was quite the stud there for a while, if you’re a hideous vampire cockroach from outer space.”

Rodney kissed his cheek. “Now you’re just trying to make me jealous.”

They spent a minute squirming around in each other’s arms, trying to bunch some of the sheets up in the wet spot John had left on the bed. Rodney bitched about it under his breath, but as long as he wasn’t going to insist that John get up so he could change the bedclothes, he could bitch. They settled with Rodney spooned against John’s back, and Rodney leaned over to kiss the corner of John’s lips and run his thumb over the stubble on his jaw. “By the way,” he said softly, “in case you haven’t caught on yet, I love you.”

“Dammit,” John mumbled, almost too far gone toward sleep to force his mouth to move at all. “Can’t believe you came up with the right thing to say before I did....”

The last thing he thought before he fell asleep against Rodney’s warm chest was that he didn’t care so much that he’d gotten Rodney like a tin of popcorn, or that his options for future hot three-way action were looking limited at this point, and he didn’t even care that much that giving Rodney up seemed like a lot bigger deal to Ronon than giving up John, but he did kind of care about...

It would have been better – easier, somehow – if Ronon just hadn’t saluted when he did it.


	6. Perimeter

The day after Ronon ended the thing that had barely started at all, Rodney came to his room and stood there fuming and incoherent. He talked for at least three minutes in what appeared to be unconnected sentence fragments, but Ronon got the general drift, which was that he was selfish and obstinate and wrong, wrong, wrong which was why Rodney didn’t miss him and didn’t want him back and might possibly never forgive him and hoped they were able to keep working together without letting this get in the way.

“Are you done?” Ronon finally said. Rodney’s face was sort of red and he really did look angry as hell. Ronon kind of felt sorry for him.

“I hate you,” he said.

“You’ll get over it.”

Sheppard didn’t come by.

The day after that, Ronon shared a transporter with a woman in a white medical coat who couldn’t quite look at him and blushed every time he looked over at her. It made him think of that other woman he’d met by a transporter, the one he’d been sort of attracted to. The first transporter woman was prettier than the second one, but he hadn’t been ready then.

He probably wasn’t ready now, but it was too late for that.

The trouble was, Ronon had no idea how to...what to say to an Atlantean woman. On Sateda, it could take months of careful groundwork to get a citizen into your bed – not that Ronon had ever had the patience for that, but at least he knew how it was done. Atlantean women weren’t like that, he hadn’t been able to help noticing, but on the other hand, you could hardly treat them like bondslaves or prostitutes. It seemed like an impossible dilemma, or at least like one he’d need some guidance to solve. Who he’d go to for guidance, Ronon certainly didn’t know.

She looked over her shoulder at him when she got off the transporter on the medlab level, smiling shyly and pushing up her glasses. Ronon leaned back against the wall, but when the doors slipped shut he realized he’d forgotten to smile back at her. He should’ve gotten that part right, at least.

He couldn’t linger in the cafeteria over dinner; it was just too much work, pretending not to be aware of Sheppard and Rodney sitting side-by-side two tables over. He wondered if they were having any trouble ignoring him, but they looked lost in conversation with each other and with Weir and Dr. Beckett. He stopped eating as soon as he wasn’t hungry anymore and went straight from there to the medlab.

The transporter woman wasn’t there, but he asked another doctor – “Brown hair, glasses, this tall?” He didn’t remember anything else about her, though. White coat. That wouldn’t help.

“Dr. Norris?” the other doctor said, and since Ronon didn’t know if that was right or wrong, he didn’t say anything. “Did you – she’s probably – I could take a message for her?”

“No,” Ronon said. “I have a thing. That she dropped on, on the transporter. I’ll give it to her when....”

“She lives right underneath here, on the four corridor, all the way down.”

“Oh,” Ronon said. He hadn’t expected.... He wasn’t sure why. Everybody else probably knew where everyone lived around here. Ronon would probably know, if he’d bothered.

That was sloppy. It wasn’t like him, not to have a grasp of his surroundings.

The four corridor had seven doors on each side, and he had no idea which of the rooms he passed had someone living in them and which of them still stood empty. The more Ronon thought about it, the stranger it seemed. What had he been thinking, hiding himself away, ignoring all of these people just because he was – frightened of them? Being frightened of something was the _best_ reason to know where it was at all times. Maybe he was more damaged than he’d thought he was.

Well, he had to stop, that was all. He had to open his eyes.

By the time he got to Dr. Norris’s quarters, he’d almost convinced himself that he had something she’d dropped on the transporter. When she opened the door and he remembered that he didn’t have the slightest believable reason to be there, he was stuck in place. Dr. Norris pulled off her glasses, then put them back on, her mouth open slightly like she’d forgotten that she didn’t know what to say, either. “I’m not bothering you, am I?” Ronon said.

“N-no. No, you’re not. I’m...Madeline Norris.”

“I’m– “

“I know who you are,” she said, and smiled at him, a warm smile of real humor. Maybe that shouldn’t have surprised Ronon – that people he didn’t know knew who he was. But it did.

“I like your smile,” he said, and that was true. She was nothing compared to the original transporter woman, except where the smile was concerned. “Sorry I didn’t smile back. Before.”

*

_Atlantis is a small world. Smaller than it looks from the outside, once you realize how much of the city is uninhabited – all that empty steel and plastic, rayed out from the breathing center of two hundred human beings._

_It doesn’t take long to explore, once he starts._

_Madeline was an expert in laser surgery, and now she heads the team of researchers that takes apart Ancient lasers and tries to figure out how they work. She doesn’t go offworld. She doesn’t have many friends. She’s bored and homesick for her sister and her sister’s kids. She’s afraid of the Wraith. She loves her work, but it’s not enough, and she regrets agreeing to come here._

_She needs Ronon because he makes this life seem more exciting. She compares him to characters in books he’s never read and movies he’s never seen. She calls what they do an affair. She calls him her gorgeous warrior from another planet, and he doesn’t bother to remind her that she’s from another planet, too. She asks him to tell her stories, and he tells her all about the missions he’s been on since he came here, but not about real war or the Wraith._

_She isn’t in love with him._

_It’s ridiculous how handsome you are (Rodney said to him, like it was his fault). It really is overkill, you understand that, don’t you?_

_*_

_Sgt. Marisol Gonzales has wanted to fuck him ever since he got here. Either because of that, or because she’s small and she’s had to learn to be mean, she hits harder than any of the other women Ronon spars with – twice as hard as Teyla, who only taps to show that she got in past your guard, keeping score. Marisol punches like she’s trying to take his head off._

_He pushed her against the wall, her sweat-damp skin squealing against the mirror behind her, and he grinned and said, “What are you so mad at me for?”_

_“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure you deserve it for something.”_

_“Why don’t you tell me what you really want?” he said._

_They’re rough with each other, but at the end she always lets go and turns soft against him and lets him do whatever he likes. He thinks she goes somewhere else in her head when she gets close to an orgasm. Or else she decides she’s made her point and she can let go._

_Marisol needs Ronon because he doesn’t outrank her and he doesn’t work with her and he’s not competing with her for promotions. She’s been a fighter all her life – she has five older brothers, and Ronon used to have three, so he knows what that means. She needs someone she doesn’t have to hold her ground against – someone who isn’t keeping score. She needs not to fight, just sometimes._

_Ronon understands that. There’s only so long you can go with nothing but fighting on your mind before something in you doesn’t work right anymore._

_She isn’t in love with him._

_You are going to fuck me hard (Sheppard told him). I like hard, hard is not a problem for me at all._

*

Ronon’s strike-squad was grounded for weeks, because Dr. Beckett said fighting off the Wraith virus had depleted Sheppard’s immune system and he wasn’t safe for offworld travel. It gave Ronon lots of time to get his bearings, to finally put faces with names and learn people’s habits.

Rodney and Sheppard almost always ate dinner together. Sometimes it was the only time Rodney came out of his lab all day long. He went right back in when dinner was over. They didn’t eat alone, but they were still together.

Ronon mostly ate alone, and mostly in his room. People had stopped telling him he couldn’t take food out of the cafeteria by then.

“Sit down,” Sheppard said. Ronon had learned by then that Sheppard’s cheerful voice *was* how he gave orders, so he put down his tray, next to Sheppard and across from Teyla, and sat. Sheppard put one arm around his shoulders, the other around Rodney’s shoulders, and jostled them both. “Now, this is more like it,” he said. “Just because nobody’s shot at us for a couple of weeks doesn’t mean we can’t all act like we’re still friends.”

Ronon picked at his vegetables. Overcooked.

“You should really leave him alone, Colonel,” Rodney said. He had his shoulders hunched forward and his elbows on the table, like someone might come along any minute and try to pull his tray out from under him. “I’m sure he has better places to be, even if he’s too military to tell you so.”

“Better places to be?” Sheppard said, in a voice that suggested the words barely made sense to him. “Like where?”

“Maybe he wants to eat with his girlfriend,” Rodney said with his mouth full.

“Who?” Ronon asked.

Rodney snorted and slammed his glass of tea down on the table. “I’m sorry, my mistake, that was very imprecise of me. Maybe he wants to eat with one of his _many_ girlfriends.”

“McKay,” Sheppard said under his breath – a short, warning tone. When neither of them looked over to meet his eyes, Sheppard sighed and let his arms drop from their shoulders. “We need to get offworld,” he said, returning to his own dinner. “This is the only unit I ever served with that gets less grouchy when there’s mortal danger in the air.”

“Do you find me...grouchy?” Teyla asked.

Sheppard attempted a smile for her, but even out of the corner of his eye, Ronon could see that it didn’t quite mask his frustration. “Nope. You and I are our usual loveable selves.”

*

_Laura says she just wants to check him out, see if any of the rumors are true, but she comes back more than once, so he suspects it’s not just curiosity. She doesn’t tell him what rumors she’s been hearing, or if they check out against the evidence or not._

_She talks a lot. She’ll be talking along about something, and then right in the middle of a sentence she’ll change her mind and do a complete about-face, saying exactly the opposite. Her voice is a little bit grating, but it grows on him, inexplicably._

_He isn’t Laura Cadman’s usual type. She likes shy men, men she thinks are undiscovered treasures. Well, maybe he is Laura Cadman’s usual type; maybe she thinks he’s shy, because he doesn’t say that much. He lets her run their fucks; he lets her run everything. Why not? It makes her happy._

_Sometimes he gets tired just listening to her chatter and chatter, making plans and repeating gossip and arguing with herself – just noise, all the time; he doesn’t even think she’s listening to herself. Then he presses her down and kisses her neck and runs his hands honey-slow over her skin. He likes to feel her relax under his touch. It’s not quite tending, but it feels a little bit the same._

_She needs Ronon because he handles her like she’s treasure, because he slows her down when everyone else around her just goes faster trying to keep up with her. He spends almost ten minutes just kissing the inside of her right thigh, and she digs her fingers into the sheets and sighs, speechless for once in her life. If she’s thinking of Dr. Beckett, well, why shouldn’t she? People should be as happy as they can be. Philosophy seems to be slipping through Ronon’s fingers as the years go by, leaving him with these little sand-grains of meaning, rough and plain, stuck to his skin. People should be as happy as they can be. People should be happy, if they can be._

_She isn’t in love with him._

_Do all that stuff (Sheppard told him, when he was flying on morphine). Make him happy, it’s good for him._

_*_

_He still dreams about Kel. Less, now, about pulling the trigger and shooting Kel through the chest, and more about the years before that._

_In his dreams, he’s his old self, his sixteen-year-old self, but he’s in Atlantis. Kel looks younger, just like Ronon does – younger than he ever was when Ronon knew him. He runs his fingernails along Ronon’s scalp while Ronon sucks him off, just like he always did, and Ronon wakes up with his dick hard and his chest burning like he’s having a heart attack._

_Ronon saw his father die of a heart attack when he was seven years old, and he’s always felt like it happened to him, too, like he knows exactly what kind of feeling makes you grab your chest like that, knocks a strong man down off his feet. He used to wake up with night terrors, convinced it was happening to him. His brothers were worried he was growing up to be a coward, so they sent him into the Infantry to become a man._

_He hadn’t had the heart-attack dreams in more than ten years. They only started again after he killed Kel. It seems strange to him that the Wraith didn’t bring them on. One of them touched his chest. It tried to stop his heart. He remembers that, but it always feels like it happened to someone else – like that was the thing he only saw, when the heart attack he did see was always the one he could feel._

_Strange._

_He dreams of Kel, and it’s a strange knot of sex and death, the trigger and his fingers and his heart._

_The memories seem the clearest in those hours at night’s end, when he’s woken up shocked and in pain from those tangled dreams. He lies in bed and remembers things that really happened – because it wasn’t *all* a dream. Some of it happened. There was a Kel, and there was a Sateda, and Ronon was that sixteen-year-old. He needs to stay sure of that._

_He remembers the rug that Kel – always a lover of fine things – bought from offworld traders and kept spread over the tarp in his bivouac. It was dark and jewel-toned, with intricate geometric patterns that tricked the eye, and stained with mud and blood after years of campaigning, but still deep and soft under Ronon’s knees. He remembers that Kel used to drink sherry from a narrow-fluted glass while Ronon sucked him._

_He remembers the taste of sherry in his mouth, mingling with the taste of come, when Kel urged him onto his back on the bed, his hard, strong fingers opening up Ronon’s clothes while they kissed in faint, startling bursts, like the flashing lights of distant artillery. “I spoil you,” Kel would purr into his mouth, trailing his fingers down Ronon’s chest. “I just can’t help myself.”_

_Kel needed him because...._

_Ronon never did know. He never claimed to understand how Kel thought, what he planned. He believes that Kel did want more from him than simply...use. He could have had that only, and he asked for more._

_Ronon was so young then. It never once occurred to him not to just give whatever a man like that asked._

_Kel loved him. Maybe. At least, that’s how Ronon remembers it. He remembers that whether he was top or bottom, Kel always made sure Ronon was the one who came first. He remembers how slowly Kel’s fingers traced the edges of his body, an idle pleasure. He remembers that Kel could always see it in his eyes when he was exhausted and afraid, and that instead of reminding Ronon of his duty, he’d give him a kiss instead._

_What’s love, really? Kel held every door open for him, and Ronon walked straight in and was never afraid._

_Yeah, I don’t know what that means (Sheppard told him). But I’m pretty sure you have my permission._

_*_

_Mitch is the one Ronon knows he should stop sleeping with. It’s not right, when he knows Mitch hates it as much as he wants it – hates the fact that he wants it. He’s a mathematician. He’s only twenty-two, and he’s a young twenty-two. Ronon thinks that this boy, a genius, a doctor of numbers, this boy who comes to his room with shaking hands and red-stained eyes and often can’t bring himself to say a word, is what Ronon’s brothers feared he would become._

_He wishes he knew what to say to this boy. He wishes he knew if letting him suck Ronon’s dick is really giving him what he needs._

_He’ll be handsome, when he’s older. He has wide, sharp cheekbones he hasn’t grown into yet, and his skin breaks out, and he carries his unhappiness in front of him, where no one can miss it. But he has thick, dark eyelashes and a graceful, predatory way of walking, like those sharp hipbones of his protect some kind of inner core of satisfaction, of pride, that he can’t reach down into yet. He hasn’t found the way. Ronon tells himself maybe he’s helping, but the truth is he just doesn’t know._

_They only use their mouths on each other, although sometimes Ronon will palm those hipbones and feel a little shudder of want, an aching flutter of something trying to find its way through the confusion and the embarrassment. Then Mitch slides away, and Ronon thinks it would be wrong to chase him. The way Ronon has gotten around not knowing how to ask Atlanteans to sleep with him is, he doesn’t. He only sleeps with the ones who ask him._

_He thinks it should excite him a little, the rawness of it, the thrill of semi-anonymity in a place where there are no strangers anymore. With Mitch there are no obligations, no gifts of self or speech asked or given. He remembers being excited by that kind of thing, once. Now he looks down at the dark, downy curl of Mitch’s hair and thinks of the way Sheppard’s mouth looked sliding easily, familiarly over Rodney’s cock, his intimate, inquisitive fingers, the crow’s-feet at his eyes when he flashed smiling glances upward. Mitch keeps his eyes closed. He sucks cock like he loves to do it, but Sheppard does it like he...._

_Like he just can’t help himself._

_Mitch needs him because he’s warm and alive and a man, and because he knows they’ll never talk about this. Someday, Ronon thinks Mitch will have a lover, and they’ll lie in bed and tell stories about their pasts, and Mitch will talk about him then, and laugh ruefully over how difficult it all seemed, how far beyond him it was to imagine asking for more. Everyone has his younger self to look back on, with pity or with envy, or both._

_He’s not in love with Ronon._

_I’ve never liked anyone this much this soon (Rodney said). And not that many people like it when I like them, so thank you._

*

The Laganese required potential allies to spend a night being watched by their oracular birds atop a high mountain aerie. It took Sheppard about fifteen minutes to get his fingers bitten.

“Let this be a lesson to you,” Rodney said primly as he double-wrapped the bandages, turning Sheppard’s hand into a cloven hoof. “Alien wildlife is not to be mocked.”

“A,” Sheppard said, “they’re not wildlife; the Laganese breed them domestically. B, I wasn’t mocking, I was being friendly.”

“They are considered sacred vessels containing the wisdom of former generations of Laganese healers and diviners,” Teyla said. “It might not be wise to treat them as house-pets.”

“Also,” Rodney said, “how many of these incidents will it take for you to start considering the possibility that you’re not as charming as you think you are?”

When Ronon got up from the fire at twilight and began to pick his way through the rough, low-lying shrubbery cluttering the upward path, Sheppard said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“See what’s up there.” The path was narrow, but if he put his hand on the rock face, he’d be all right. His eyesight was good in the dark.

“Nothing’s up there,” Sheppard said. “Other than bitchy birds, and massive, deadly rock slides yet-to-be.”

“Something’s there,” Ronon said. “They said people come up here to leave offerings for the birds?”

“So?” Sheppard said.

Ronon shrugged. “A person doesn’t come this far up a mountain and then not go all the way to the top. There must be a way.”

Sheppard came with him, keeping his good hand to the mountain and using his bandaged hand to knock aside the brambles and hardy mountain scrub that kept catching on the sleeve of Ronon’s coat. The path curved around and upward, but Ronon guessed the ledge that the Laganese had set their camp on was no more than fifty feet from the summit, as the sacred vessel flies.

“Not bad,” Sheppard said when they found the lookout point, but his voice wasn’t flippant at all. The stars were huge at the top of the mountain, and the fires of the Laganese settlements were warm and bright underneath them, and in between there was nothing but shadow and shade and the throaty cooing of the narrowly built grey-feathered birds all around them. “Which way are we facing, west? Too bad we missed sunset.”

“Southwest,” Ronon said. “More south than west.”

“Christ, do you think you could be a little less romantic?” Sheppard said bitterly. “You’re kinda embarrassing me.”

“Do you want a blowjob?” Ronon’s voice was flat and expressionless; it was only half a joke, because for all he knew, that was what Sheppard considered romantic.

“Do you give a fuck what I want?” Sheppard snapped back, and Ronon didn’t really have an answer for that, so he didn’t say anything. They just stood there looking at the stars, until he noticed Sheppard shifting from side to side uncomfortably, hunched into himself against the sluggish, chill wind. Of course he’d left his jacket down at the main plateau. Ronon took his coat off and held it out toward him, and Sheppard reached for it automatically, then stopped.

“Go on,” Ronon said. “I’m not cold.”

The coat was big on Sheppard – not just too long, but too bulky on his thin frame. He didn’t look like himself; it was like putting leather on one of these birds, wings and delicate wishbones hidden under someone else’s skin. “You know Rodney misses you,” Sheppard said. It sounded awkward, as if he’d memorized a set of foreign words, tutored by someone who didn’t speak the language either. Maybe that was exactly what happened.

“He said that?”

“Well...you know Rodney. I’m paraphrasing.”

“I give too much of a fuck what you want,” Ronon said abruptly. “There was a time when all I would’ve wanted would be to give you whatever you want.”

“I don’t know what you think I’m going to make you do, once I have you under my evil sway – assuming I, in fact, had an evil sway to put you under.”

“You do know.”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I thought you understood it was...totally up to you. I thought you wanted to sleep with us, but if I somehow accidentally manipulated you or made you feel obligated– “

“It’s not about that.”

“Well, then, would you do me the very great honor of telling me what the fuck it _is_ about? Just on the off-chance that me understanding what the hell is going on here would help me get my team back together.”

“Don’t make this about the team.”

“Of course it’s about the team!”

“I do my job.”

“This isn’t the kind of job where you can just clock in and out! I need a little bit more from you than that.”

Sheppard was in front of him now instead of behind him; Ronon wasn’t sure which of them had moved, but he suspected it might be him, since he seemed to be further from the mountain’s edge than he was before, the stars behind him and Sheppard and the stone in front of him. He wrapped his hands in the lapels of his coat and leaned his weight into Sheppard, pushing him against the rocks. “Is this my job?” he said, the words catching in his throat and turning into a growl. “Is this what you need?”

“Yeah,” Sheppard breathed. “Yeah, this is it,” and pulled him down by the neck to kiss him hard.

When he was on his knees, Sheppard reached down to touch his face, the heel of his hand resting under Ronon’s chin. “I’m not your old commander,” he said, and his voice was warm, Colonel Sheppard’s we’re-all-friends-here tone, but his eyes brooked no arguments. “And I’m not your dad, and I’m not your tenth-grade boyfriend, or whoever the hell else you’re afraid I am. I’m not anybody.”

Ronon pressed a still kiss with open mouth against Sheppard’s groin, breathing in the smell of skin and semen and leather. “I know who you are, John.”

His moans were in the same low register as the cooing of the flocking Laganese birds, the same slightly anxious cadences. “Also,” he said, his fingers pecking against Ronon’s skull for attention, “also, I don’t want you doing that thing to me, that thing where you service me like I need an oil change. That freaks me out. This is just us, okay? Agreed?”

“Sure,” Ronon said, palming his own cock as he licked at the tip of Sheppard’s.

He brought himself off in perfect time with Sheppard. He knelt up, pressing his forehead into Sheppard’s solar plexus, his wet mouth against the tender skin of Sheppard’s belly while he caught his breath. Sheppard’s hands traveled over his hair, his gentleness spoiled by the clumsy way they trembled. “I can’t help myself,” Ronon murmured, his lips drawing come and spit against skin as his hands traced the lean muscle and soft hair of Sheppard’s thighs. “I spoil you....”

“You make me insane,” Sheppard said, and Ronon wasn’t sure from the tone of his voice if it was a compliment or not.

*

The Laganese consulted their birds in the morning, and Ronon was half afraid the ugly alien pigeons would report back about what they saw on the south face. He wondered what kind of fraternization regs the Laganese believed in.

Apparently the birds were sanguine, though, and the Laganese led Ronon and his team down to a sandy lakeshore with a waterfall and left them alone to bathe. It wasn’t entirely clear if bathing was a part of the ritual or not, and Ronon didn’t particularly care; after a long, cold night at high altitudes, the spring-heated lake was a religious experience as far as he was concerned.

Sheppard and Rodney splashed like otters while they bickered about...one of those incomprehensible things they argued about. Whether men made of bats were science fiction or not? Ronon didn’t intend to get involved, but when Rodney said that comic books couldn’t be science fiction, Sheppard made an indignant noise that implied the point was too stupid to debate, and Ronon heard himself saying, “That book you gave me was funny.”

“What book?” Rodney asked scornfully, as if Ronon were inventing some incident just to interfere. His face changed suddenly as he remembered, and he looked Ronon over with something like awe. “You really read that?”

“Yeah, I read it. Wasn’t that the point of loaning it to me?”

“I didn’t think you’d get very far. But that’s not – that’s not what we were talking about. I mean, a comic book is not a – a _comic. book_ , a comedic book, it doesn’t have anything to do with comedy. You really thought _Hitchhiker_ was funny?”

Ronon shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable under Rodney’s look. He normally only approved of Ronon in private. “I didn’t understand all of it. But parts of it were really good.”

“There are sequels,” Rodney said, his voice suddenly timid. “You should – I’ll loan you the next one.”

“Don’t worry,” Sheppard said, “you’re not actually supposed to understand it.”

“I imagine you’re quite comfortable with that sort of thing,” Rodney said, rounding on Sheppard. “Being released from the pesky demands of rationality keeps your pretty head from getting all muddled up with the fine distinctions between, oh, say, the DC universe and _science_.” And then they were off again. Ronon swam back to shore, where Teyla was sunning herself in a patch of scrub grass.

She turned her head toward him, her face resting on the backs of her folded hands, and looked at him with one eye. Belatedly, Ronon wondered if it was impolite to sit down next to her wearing nothing but his wet underwear, but she seemed as unperturbed as ever, and honestly he didn’t think he could get into his pants before he’d dried off even if he wanted to. The Laganese apparently didn’t believe in towels.

After she’d absorbed whatever inscrutable thing Teyla looked for in people, she turned her face back toward the lake, slit-eyed against the light flashing off the water’s surface. Ronon didn’t look at all, just rolled a ball of wet sand carefully between his thumb and forefinger.

“I have always believed,” Teyla said at last, “that a community is a kind of circle.” She stretched out her arm and drew one in the sand in front of her, about the size of Ronon’s fist and perfectly even. “A circle drawn to include all the members of that community. Did you have occasion to study geometry when you were a child?”

“A little bit,” he said. He didn’t remember much about geometry except that he hadn’t enjoyed it. He hadn’t enjoyed any of his lessons; it was hard to sit so still for so long, but impossible to imagine defying the authority of his Masters. An unbearable tension, impossible to resolve in his body or mind. He’d been relieved when his oldest brother told him he was to be given to the Infantry instead.

“A circle is the sum of all points that are a single, given distance from one point.” She made a crescent-shaped dent in the sand with her fingernail, in the circle’s center. “Without the center, a circle has no meaning. When I learned that, I thought to myself, well, that is the purpose of wise leadership: to establish the circle’s center. I meditated on that for many years. I felt that it was my duty to understand this idea, and to be a fixed thing by which my people could recognize their place within the body of the whole.”

Ronon looked at her with a new sort of appreciation. He’d always figured Teyla for one of those people who liked to discuss every little thing – who didn’t understand what real leadership meant. She always received orders, whether from Colonel Sheppard or Dr. Weir, with a detached tranquility that seemed to imply that obedience wasn’t much of a bother to her, so she would obey.

“But after a certain number of years,” Teyla said, her voice lowering soothingly, as if she were breaking bad news to him, “I realized that the centerpoint is the beginning of a circle, but not the essence of it. A circle is _the sum of all points a given distance from the center_.” She smoothed her hand across the empty space inside the circle, blurring its lines, obscuring the moon-shaped center of it. “A circle is comprised of an infinite number of points, but what unifies it is the radius – the distance maintained from the center. To occupy a point closer to the center, or farther away, breaks the circle. And I began to realize that if a community is a circle, then everything that is not the center must always be apart from it. A circle has no meaning if this is not so. It ceases to exist.”

“The meaning of life is math?” Ronon said. “You sound like McKay now.”

“Dr. McKay has his own wisdom; I have learned much from him. I consider him a friend, as well.”

“Are you ever lonely?” It probably wasn’t the thing to ask; Ronon didn’t think he’d like it very much if someone put the same question to him.

“No,” she said, and smiled softly at him. “I was lonely when I believed I was a single point at the center. At the circumference, I am one of an uncountable number. I have never been less lonely than I am in Atlantis. But it does depend on holding the place I am given, and there is an art to that.” 

*

_Atlantis is a small world, smaller than it looks from the outside. Ronon gets bored with running up and down the levels of the center towers and starts going for long runs, out on the piers, around the vacant wingtips of the city._

_It can take hours, keeping to the far perimeter. His heartbeat fits inside the sound of the tides, a ratio of twenty-to-one. Ronon has the time. He’s not sleeping much these days anyway._

_Colonel Sheppard has already invested an incredible amount of time and energy (Weir said), trying to make you an integral part of his team._

_You have no idea, Ronon didn’t say. Atlantis is too small for secrets (you almost have to try *not* to learn what you have no business knowing, in a place this size), but Ronon understands now what you can and can’t say out loud._

_He won’t betray his taskmaster, even one who breaks his heart. Oh, he’ll shoot and kill the one who loved him, but John Sheppard, who doesn’t have a clue how this radius they preserve between them is eating away at who and what Ronon thought he was – John, he’ll protect at any cost._

_He goes further and further to the outer edge every day, and when he’s built the longest circuit he can, he starts doing two laps instead of one. Sheppard doesn’t run with him anymore, so he doesn’t have to worry about anyone keeping up._

_Three laps takes all night long, and he has to rest up a few times along the way, but he can do it. Ronon thinks he’s in the same shape he was when he was a Runner, and he’s quietly proud of that. Atlantis is the kind of place that can make you soft if you let it, and he wasn’t brought here to get soft. He was brought here because the Atlanteans admire his ability to endure._

_It’s important to Ronon that he holds the place he’s been given._

_Atlantis needs him because he is fucking unkillable._

_Three laps takes all night long, and he can’t do any more, but it’s somehow not enough, either. He  
begins to layer them inside each other, like the nested orbits in solar system diagrams – the first run goes all the way around the outside of the city, and he starts in the late afternoon, when there’s only one sun in the sky and the heat coming off Atlantis’s shimmering body armor isn’t too unbearable. The second run skirts the mirrored walls. The third is inside. He can do four laps that way, five before long. He spirals them inward, each not quite as far out as the last, until it’s deep into the night watch and he’s back to his own tower, back to the animate center of the city where he supposedly lives._

_Sometimes he crashes up against his own door, amazed he can’t see the trail of his footprints in blood, amazed his heart can take this, amazed there’s enough air in the world, and still a part of him wishes he didn’t have to stop._

_He tells himself he runs now by choice. This is his choice. The difference between a Runner and a man is...._

_The platitudes fall away by the third lap, though. The real difference between a Runner and a man is that a Runner has problems he really *can* outrun. A man has duties, responsibilities. And those are always with you._

_See, the thing is, Colonel Sheppard and I have sort of gotten into this habit of saving each other’s lives (Rodney said), and it’s my turn. It can be your turn next._

*

After the _Aurora_ (a mission that sounded thrilling on paper, but actually didn’t involve anything more strenuous than counting on Ronon’s part), they all toasted to the dead with a sweet white wine that fizzed like grape soda. Sheppard and Rodney left together, and Ronon went running.

Out to the end of each pier, out as far as you could go without falling into the ocean. The Ronons were a family of farmers from a landlocked province; he’d seen the ocean a few times before coming to Atlantis, mostly while flying over it on his way to a new deployment. He’d never felt like he was looking at something familiar when he stood at the edge of it.

Out to the boundary, the ocean, and then in, and in, and in again. He passed Sheppard’s room every night on the innermost ring, sometime around 0100. He only stopped there one time, the night after the _Aurora_ , and Sheppard wasn’t even inside.

The door opened, though. Sheppard never kept it locked, or else the door locks recognized Ronon as someone who belonged inside. He wasn’t, really, someone who belonged inside, but the door opened, and it was hard not to step in. The ligaments in his right knee were killing him, anyway; he only wanted to sit down for a minute.

Sheppard’s quarters looked more like someone’s real home than almost anywhere else Ronon had been in Atlantis. Most of the scientists had quarters that seemed like auxiliary labs, and the soldiers kept a stark kind of order that would have made Kel roll his eyes at their lack of style. Sheppard didn’t have much style, either, but his quarters were comfortably cluttered with evidence of his real life, from the picture of his musician and the guitar that Ronon had never seen him play leaning underneath it, to the different sizes and shapes of balls for different games kicked out of the way underneath the desk he never used, to the jumble of empty DVD boxes and unmarked discs scattered carelessly around his computer monitor. He’d been in Atlantis for more than a year, and you could feel the way the room had gotten to know him in that time.

Ronon sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his knee. This late at night, he couldn’t imagine where Sheppard would be except in McKay’s quarters. It was impossible not to think about that, but Ronon’s energy reserves were so depleted that he didn’t feel anything as the thoughts passed through his mind – not desire, not sadness, not anger – nothing except a grim kind of peace. They were together, and he was here. People should be as happy as they can be.

Ronon hadn’t been really happy for a long time.

He laid down on his back and pulled his knee up toward his chest, trying to gauge how badly hurt it was. Not very, he didn’t think. The pain would wear off.

He didn’t plan to stay where he hadn’t been invited and didn’t belong, but once he was lying down he was suddenly tired, and Sheppard’s mattress was softer than most in Atlantis – trust Sheppard to steal the best one for himself, and then to keep it even once he was sleeping with a man who insisted it was a medical necessity to sleep on something roughly the consistency of petrified wood. Ronon didn’t have back problems, though, and he liked this mattress a lot.

*

_He went to sleep on his side but wakes up on his back, in the dark. He knows John’s hands, though, pulling the blankets over him, and the mint of his aftershave, and even the spot where his eyelashes end at the corner of his eye, which is the only part of John that he can really see as it hovers near his own eyes. He smells like something else besides aftershave and hair gel, too – salt sweat, salt water, hot melted butter – all of that and none of it, the smell of Rodney’s skin. Ronon shivers._

_John stretches out alongside him, his arm across Ronon’s chest. When Ronon tries to sit up, John rolls against him, dead weight over half his body. Ronon makes a small grunt of protest and gets his elbow under him, tries to sit up again. John gets heavier._

_He opens his mouth to say stop, to say let me go, and John touches his lips, sliding the tips of his fingers inside his mouth. Ronon closes his eyes. If it’s this dark, does it count? If you can’t prove it was ever real, can it turn against you?_

_John makes a little sound, not much more than a breath, and runs his hand softly over Ronon’s face. Two of his fingers are damp, two dry, and his thumb raking almost audibly against the crisp hair of Ronon’s beard._

_One last time, Ronon tries to shake himself loose. He outweighs John; he knows he’s stronger. John’s got the better position, though, and Ronon’s got twenty years of learning how to give way and trust, warring with just seven years of chaos. At the bottom of it all, he’s still more Ronon Dex than he is a Runner, and this is a battle he can’t commit himself to._

_His breathing nestles up against John’s without effort, the only two sounds Ronon can hear; he may not think much of the Ancients’ taste in beds, but at least the frames don’t squeak. John touches him over and over, his face and his chest underneath his clothes, a soothing touch that makes Ronon think of sleep as much as sex. More than sex._

_More than sex, he just needs something he can rest against._

_I don’t need this (Rodney said). I don’t need two of you._

*

He woke up sense by sense. First, the smell of coffee. Second, the thick pillow underneath him and the blanket pulled almost up to his nose. Third, the soft keyboard sounds and rustling of paper, and a grumble that expressed a world of long-suffering without any discernable words.

He rolled over in bed and blinked several times at the auxiliary lab that had colonized John’s quarters. How was it possible that even Rodney McKay’s implacable willpower could turn someone else’s space into his own office in just a few hours, with the help of not much more than a laptop and twenty file folders? Ronon watched John move a few things out of the way so he could situate his own laptop more securely on the table, and then watched Rodney huff impatiently and move the same papers right back.

It was after 1000; they could conceivably have been at this game for five or six hours by now, knowing Rodney’s hours. Ronon found that idea strangely endearing.

They noticed him at the same time. “Hey,” John said throatily. Rodney only looked at him for a moment, then got up to pour a cup of coffee from the machine on John’s desk (which didn’t belong to John, and wasn’t there last night) and bring it over to Ronon.

“Thanks,” Ronon said, shoving the blanket off and sitting up to take the hot coffee from Rodney’s hands. He continued to wait expectantly, until Rodney rolled his eyes and produced half a raisin bagel wrapped in a paper napkin.

Taking the opportunity to talk while Ronon had his mouth full of something that took work to chew, Rodney said, “Well, if you hadn’t slept half the day away, we might have been able to sort some things out. Unfortunately, I now have approximately one hundred and four stupid meetings and, I believe, two that might turn out to make a difference in anyone’s life. I’m sorry,” he said, a little more softly. “I wanted.... This has been a bad week for me.”

“It’s okay,” Ronon said. He’d come to count on Rodney being unavailable; it made him easier to avoid. He touched Rodney’s hand, and when he didn’t pull it back, he squeezed Rodney’s fingers and then let go. He glanced down to where their knees were almost touching and didn’t lift his eyes until Rodney touched his fingertips to his hairline.

“I want to be sure about this,” Rodney said. “I think I have a grasp on the situation, but I have a tendency to misread people, and you’re sort of – well, let’s just say you’re expressive in a _special_ way, just for that extra little bit of fun challenge. It’s not us, is it? Us meaning you and me. I mean, whatever the problem is.... That is – I mean – if it were just the two of us....”

“It’s not.”

“I know that. I didn’t mean to imply that it – was – or that it could be, or ever – would be. But on a purely hypothetical basis.... The problem here isn’t between....”

After a silence, Ronon said, “Was that the end of your sentence?”

“Oh, now look who’s witty. That’s wonderful. What I’m saying is, all other things being equal – temporarily, _hypothetically_ – is there anything that’s...that’s wrong between us? Because I don’t think there is. I could be wrong. This isn’t really my field, you know. But...is there? You can answer now,” Rodney said after another silence. “I know, that probably went by a bit quickly. Shall I try again? With fewer technical terms this time. ‘Hypothetically,’ by the way, means ‘let’s pretend.’ Now, taking subject of you and I and _hypothetically_ removing all the external variables, do any of the many deep-seated psychological and emotional problems plaguing this relationship, and by that I’m referring to your psychological and emotional problems, just to be clear – do any of them have to do with me directly?”

“Well, you’re a lot older than me.” It was one thing to be attracted to Rodney’s condescending shit, but it was something else to let him know that. 

Rodney’s face went through a couple different varieties of shock, before settling on that loftily wounded look he wore when he thought people were taking cheap shots at him. “And on that note,” he said over his shoulder at Sheppard, “I’ll turn this over to your skillful and experienced diplomacy. Try not to get bitten. Which is sort of a metaphor for...don’t screw this up, all right?”

Sheppard rolled his eyes, but allowed Rodney to peck his lips with a kiss as he gathered up his computer and an apparently random selection of files. “Well, I got such a good lead-in,” he said. “Be a shame to waste it.”

Rodney paused at the door and looked back with an irritated frown that Ronon thought was what passed for regret on Rodney’s face. “I really wanted to have time this morning, but...you’ve looked so tired lately, I thought....”

“Thanks,” Ronon said again. He didn’t think it was a very good sign that Rodney was leaving without kissing him, but at least Rodney worried about his well-being, and that was something. That was as much as Ronon should probably be letting himself want.

When they were alone together, Sheppard pulled his chair closer to the bed and propped his feet up, crossed at the ankles. His arms were crossed over his chest, too, his whole body wrapped up in stubborn knots, and Ronon knew he wouldn’t be able to get out of this just by keeping his mouth shut. “We can do this up-front, can’t we?” Sheppard said. Ronon shrugged, unsure whether or not he completely understood the figure of speech. He thought it just meant be honest, but sometimes there was more packed into the way Atlanteans used their words than Ronon could unravel very quickly. “Good. We’ll skip the what-do-you-want part, because I know what you want, you want the same thing McKay wants.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t skip this part,” Ronon said, “if you only know what two out of three of us want.”

Sheppard smiled a little tightly. “I don’t count.”

“You don’t count.”

He wondered if Sheppard even realized he was kicking at the edge of the bed with his heel like a small boy chafing under adult injustice. “No, I’m the fucking CO around here, right? I get to make sure we do the smart thing. You can brood and Rodney can bitch, but my job is to give the fucking orders. See? I’m better at this gig than you think I am.”

“I never said you weren’t good at it.”

“Right, because I’m an idiot, and I can’t tell that you think I do a shit job with my team. Hell, maybe you’re right; I love you guys a lot, but collectively speaking, we’re not the best advertisement for my managerial style.”

“So you’re trying out a new style,” Ronon said, setting his empty coffee cup aside. “You plan on giving me an order now?”

It took Sheppard a minute to answer; maybe that was more up-front than he’d been imagining. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I guess that’s what I plan on doing.”

“Let’s hear it,” Ronon said, even though he knew, more or less, what Sheppard was going to say.

Sheppard took a deep breath and said, “Get over this.”

He waited for a minute, and then said, “That’s it?” Usually Sheppard’s orders came with a lot more elaboration.

“Look, I don’t know what else to say to you! Yes, I’m attracted to you, you know I am. And I like you, I feel like I can relax around you, and in my experience it’s not all that common to find people you can just be around, and be – yourself, be comfortable. Is there a part of me that wishes I could be with you? _Obviously_ , but I’m with Rodney, I plan to be with Rodney for a while, and the fact that you and Rodney are _fucking in love with each other_ is kind of a complicating factor, but I’m not.... Okay, I have, in the past, had kind of a martyr complex, and maybe I did technically say at one point that I didn’t want to be possessive and make him unhappy, but the thing is.... The thing is, I had him _first_ and I don’t feel like bowing out, on account of this theory I have that factors in a whole lot of sucky things about Atlantis and balances them out with a couple of key constants, which basically consist of Puddlejumpers and Rodney. I can’t...I can’t let him go. I used to think I could if I had to, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“I never expected you to.” Any more than he ever expected Rodney to let Sheppard go.

“I know the two of you have this idea in your heads that we all could– “ He broke off and scrubbed his hands through his hair, then down over his face, and said, “Look, I have to do my job here. I have to tell you, it _can’t_ happen that way. It’s not going to.”

He’d known that, too. It wasn’t so much an idea in his head as it was...just this quiet need in his chest. It wasn’t the first need Ronon had ever had that wasn’t going to be met.

“For all kinds of reasons,” Sheppard said, as if he were answering somebody’s question. Maybe this was a speech he’d prepared for Rodney, who would no doubt have had a few questions by this point. “First of all, it’s ludicrous to say it wouldn’t affect the team, because I think we’ve proven none of us are all that mature. It would totally affect the team. It’s also against– I admit I have a lot more wiggle room here than I would at any other posting, but you can’t keep something like this a secret, and I really, really don’t think I can stretch ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ to encompass setting up a big, queer harem on base. Plus, let’s not kid ourselves, it’s fraternization whether the two of you are military or not. Spirit of the law, it’s completely fraternization. And anyway, it just – it just doesn’t _work_. People keep trying it, because on paper, hey, it sounds great, but these things never really work out. Someone gets jealous and someone feels left out and everybody gets hurt and people take sides. It would never work, and knowing the three of us and our people skills, we’d all end up hating each other. It’s not worth it. We’re just not going to get ourselves into that situation, because....”

“I know,” he said.

Sheppard cleared his throat roughly and said, “Good, maybe you can explain it to McKay, then. I told him it was impossible, but you know how he is.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, hm,” Sheppard said, looking up at the ceiling. “Let me see if I can remember it exactly.” His voice shifted into Rodney’s clipped, fussy tones as he said, “It was something like, ‘John, maybe you can explain to me _why it is_ that when _I_ tell you something is impossible, you tell me to stop whining and do it anyway, but when _you_ tell me something is impossible, I’m supposed to, what? Believe you have the first clue what you’re talking about?’”

“You’re pretty good at that,” Ronon said.

“Thanks. I’ve been practicing. Rodney is – he’s a romantic. You know, he’d deny it, but there’s a certain kind of romantic you can only be when you’ve never been in love before, and he’s just rotten with it. I guess he has to get it knocked out of him eventually, but you understand I’m not trying to rush the process.”

“I’ll get over this,” Ronon said. “But....”

“But what?”

It was easier to say while he was looking down at the blanket lying twisted over his leg, and not at Sheppard. “It would be easier to do if you would...stop touching me?”

Sheppard leaned heavily back in his chair, as if his skeleton had suddenly powered down to minimum levels. “I’m sorry. I know.”

“I’m doing my best to...keep the right distance. You can call it brooding, but – it’s the best I know how to....”

“I know. I know. It’s not your fault, I know. It’s really mine. I’m the one who started all this. I just thought it was – at that point it didn’t seem so – serious. I didn’t know it would turn all _serious_ like this. Now you don’t feel like you can be within a mile of either one of us, and I can’t seem to keep my fucking hands off of you, and Rodney’s– He’s completely miserable. You realize he’s miserable, right?”

“Yeah,” Ronon said, because miserable Rodney wasn’t any more or less snappish and difficult than regular Rodney, but he could tell the difference anyway, somehow.

“And I know it seems like there’s a simple solution, but it’s – it’s not simple, and it’s frankly not even a solution, it just creates new problems. And I don’t have the luxury.... It’s my team at stake. That’s where my first responsibility has to be, I don’t have any choice about that. Anything else would be bad for all of us, it would be bad for Atlantis, it would be...it would be....”

“Dishonorable?” Ronon suggested.

Sheppard leaned toward him, and for a moment Ronon thought he was going to perform that salute that the Athosians used. “Sorry about this in advance,” he said roughly, and laced his fingers together behind Ronon’s neck, resting his forehead in the crook.

“It’s okay,” Ronon said softly, and touched Sheppard’s back.

He shivered a few times, and once his breath hitched suspiciously, but mostly Sheppard just stayed like that, with Ronon stroking his back, until he seemed to be himself again. When he pushed away, Ronon touched the side of his face lightly with his thumb. “I hate being the responsible one,” Sheppard said.

“Too close or too far away,” Ronon said, “and it just...doesn’t work. I think...you’re actually...the best commander I ever had. If it makes you feel any better.” Sheppard didn’t say anything to that, but Ronon could see in his eyes that it meant something to him. “I don’t think McKay’s going to be happy with how we solved this,” he said.

“Too bad. He said himself, if it was just the two of you, there wouldn’t be a problem to solve. This is because of me, and all I can do is.... This is the best I can do.”

“I think,” Ronon said slowly, “if it was just any two of us, there wouldn’t be a problem to solve. Right?”

Sheppard started to say something, then stopped. He put his hands on either side of Ronon’s face and said, “This is the last time I’m going to kiss you, all right? I swear I’ll stop, I just...need you to....” Ronon closed his eyes and let John have whatever kind of kiss he wanted to take.

He went with long and wet and unsettlingly gentle, and when he pulled away, their mouths making a soft, desperate sound, Ronon stood up, resisting the urge to wipe his mouth on the back of his hand. It wouldn’t have helped; he didn’t know how long he’d be able to feel that touch, but he knew he couldn’t make it go away just by wanting it to. If he could do things like that, it would never have come to this stage at all.

“If you want,” Ronon said at the door, “you can tell Rodney that you asked me. I mean – asked me to – you know what I mean. You can just...tell him I said no. Then he’ll be mad at me instead of you, and I don’t see that much of him anymore anyway.”

That was supposed to help, but from the look that crossed John’s face, something about what he’d said was more hurtful than saying nothing at all. This really wasn’t Ronon’s field, either. “Thanks for the offer,” John said, a little sourly, “but in the interest of accountability, I should really stick with acting like I’m in charge around here, rather than finding other people to take the blame for me.”

“Okay. You’re...you’re doing the right thing. All of it. I mean.... I think you are.”

John smiled, but it didn’t look very natural. “This is what honor feels like, huh?”

“Usually.”

“Getting laid is better.”

Ronon couldn’t help smiling. “Usually.”

That night he didn’t run, just walked all the way out to the end of the long pier, the one farthest away from the geographic center of the city – although as he watched a jumper come in from the mainland, he found it hard to accept the idea that the Gate wasn’t the centerpoint of Atlantis. He wondered if McKay knew some kind of convoluted math that would explain how the center of a circle could be in a different place from where it looked like it was. Ever since Rodney told him about imaginary numbers and what he called non-Euclidian geometry, Ronon wouldn’t put much past him. He did have a flair for the impossible, Rodney McKay.

When he turned back toward the city, there were lights in the windows of the inner towers.


	7. Commitment

In the cave he had a lot of time to think. He watched the sunlight drag back and forth across the outside ridge and redivided his rations over and over, first into exactly even piles, then staggering larger meals and smaller meals.

In the cave, he had all day, every day to come up with a plan. He came up with nothing, but not for lack of time. Maybe if there had been more of a rush, it would have jump-started his brain into gear, made those crunch-time ideas start flowing. That was how it always seemed to work for Rodney.

Rodney would have had a plan.

Rodney _should_ have had a plan, even from the outside, but he didn’t. Not a good plan, anyway, where “good” equaled “one that gets John Sheppard the fuck out of this cave.”

Three days, give or take, to dehydrate, once his canteen went dry. He went to sleep the first night trying not to hum that like a lullaby in the back of his mind. _Three days to dehydrate – once the canteen goes dry –_

Unless he scaled the ridge and went for water. There was a green field underneath him, water obviously flowing from somewhere.

_Three days...give or take...once the canteen goes dry...._

_Unless you go alone. Unless you go it alone, Johnny._

*

The night before they left, John took Rodney’s big hand between both of his and kissed the soft, golden bruises across the pale skin of his forearms, just north of where the blue veins pulsed. Rodney made soft, golden sounds, humming sounds, and petted John’s hair with his other hand.

John looked up at him, and Rodney read his face, like Rodney so often could. “It’s fine,” he said firmly. “I’m fine, I’m ready. Don’t you think you’d have heard about it by now if I weren’t fine?”

Which – okay, fair. But the bruises hadn’t even disappeared yet, bruises from the leather restraints, the edges uneven to demarcate the lines of his useless struggle to pull free of them. “There’s no reason it has to be tomorrow,” John said. “I’m not saying you’re not ready, I’m just...putting that out there. It could be the day after tomorrow, it could be next week. We won’t go anywhere until the whole team is– “

“Teyla and Ronon are ready,” Rodney said. “You’ve got your whole team.”

“Teyla and Ronon didn’t have as– “

“Quit acting like I’m dying. Why the hell aren’t you ever this concerned about me when I _am_ dying?”

John smiled into his wrist. “Cause usually I’m dying, too, and that gets me kind of distracted. We tend to practically die in tandem.”

“Well, isn’t that sweet,” Rodney sniped. “And you think we don’t get enough ‘us time.’”

“Yeah, when I said that, I was thinking about naked us time,” John said. He was grinning and short of breath and, yes, naked, and he pushed himself up along Rodney’s body until they were eyes-to-eyes, mouth-to-mouth, and cock-to-cock. “We really never do get enough of that.”

“No,” Rodney agreed, running his fingers into John’s hair. “Time’s the one thing we never seem to have.”

He almost made a joke about coffee, but something about the expression on Rodney’s face made John shut up and kiss him instead.

*

Couple of days and he was out of water. Right on schedule.

_Give or take. Go it alone._

Everything was green and growing, off the edge of the cliff. He knew there had to be water down there somewhere, even if he couldn’t see it from up here.

It occurred to him, just briefly, that there might not be anyone out there to save him. He didn’t know how, exactly, that could have happened. Maybe giant pterodactyls had swooped down and devoured everybody while they were working on his “Dear Sheppard, We’ll have you out of there in a jiffy, Love, Everybody” letter. 

Maybe he was _dead_ , and this was some kind of fucked-up Outer Limits afterlife test. Find out what kind of a man he really was. Stay or go, stay or go? Trust them or take care of yourself? Team player, or....

Oh, well, fuck the afterlife, anyway – fucking God or the Ascended Ones or whoever was out there passing judgement on him. He never left one of his own behind, he took _care_ of his people. He wasn’t that guy, he was good at – _great_ at commitment. Twenty years in the Air Force, he’d broken his fucking back trying to stick with Ford, there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for Atlantis, Christ, he was even in a committed _relationship_ for the first time in...years.

He was a very loyal person, god fucking dammit, with the ability to trust and be intimate and all of that shit, and he was going to fucking _sit_ here until his people _rescued_ him, which would absolutely be....

Any time now.

*

The first time things got physical with Rodney McKay, they were in the back of a docked Puddlejumper; ever since there was a fucking Wraith on his ship, John could have sworn the thing didn’t quite work right – slower to respond to nav commands, a little wobble to the right when they weren’t doing anything but gliding. Something. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he badgered the shit out of Rodney til he agreed to come look at it anyway.

Maybe it was all in John’s head, but at least it got Rodney out of his office, where he’d pretty much locked himself away ever since they came back to Atlantis without Gaul. John was sure whatever the hell he did in there was important and all that, but it couldn’t be doing any favors for Rodney’s mental stability, and the last thing Atlantis needed was the division head of R&D cracking up on them. John kind of missed him, too.

“Ah, yes, now I see it,” Rodney said, his long fingers skittering rapidly over the data panel he’d jacked into a main line in the back.

“You found something?” John said, swinging his feet down from the co-pilot’s seat to the floor. “I knew it! What’s she saying?”

“Let’s see, she’s saying...that her pilot is a _great big baby_ , and you should get therapy like everybody else instead of wasting that dashing scientist’s valuable time. Hm, who do you think she means?” He patted the Jumper wall soothingly, which, hah. Like any of the ships would ever take Rodney’s side against John. And he’d had plenty of therapy over the years, thanks. He was brimming over with self-knowledge.

Unlike a certain dashing scientist he could mention.

“I quit,” Rodney said, pulling the data panel free and winding the wires around the display before shoving it into its case. He didn’t seem to notice John getting out of his chair and coming towards him. “There’s nothing wrong, the Jumper is fine. No Wraith cooties, no barnacles, no existential angst.”

“Great,” John said, and braced his arms on either side of Rodney, pinning him quite literally into a corner. “Because existential angst was _really_ what I was most concerned about.” _Wraith cooties_. Really, fuck McKay, anyway.

“And anyway,” Rodney said, his eyes gone slightly wider and his voice sightly more vague, “if there were a problem, it would really be an engineering problem. I’m mostly here just to humor you....”

“That’s big of you. What with your time being so valuable and all.”

“Major,” he said, with a distinct note of desperation in his voice, “I’m sure things are a little different in the military, what with all the, uh, ass-slapping and hazing and communal showers and all that– “

“Ass-slapping?” John repeated, feeling his eyebrows climb.

“Well, they do it in sports. It’s just that for those of us who don’t live our lives in a haze of testosterone-driven camaraderie, this, this,” he gestured frenetically in the narrow space between their bodies, “is not generally considered normal behavior. A less evolved person than myself, actually, might be inclined to mistake – to misinterpret– “

“Well, let’s not misinterpret each other,” John said, and kissed him.

 _Take *that* to therapy, jackass_ , John thought.

It probably would have stopped right there if Rodney hadn’t slid his palm softly over John’s cheek, ignoring the stubble. John was ready for a panic attack or for Rodney to slip him the tongue, but that gesture was so unexpectedly vulnerable that it seemed to change the rules of the game right off the starting line. He broke the kiss, but let Rodney grip him by the hair and pull their foreheads together in what was a probably unconscious imitation of the Athosians.

Shit, John thought. _Shit._

“I’m not. I’m not really gay,” Rodney said, and that at least was familiar. If John had a nickel for every time he’d heard _that_ line.

“I never ask.”

“Technically, you’re not supposed to tell, either.”

“I haven’t told you a thing,” John said, finding the zipper on Rodney’s shirt. “Anything you may have deduced.... What can I say? You’re a smart guy.”

“ _And_ this would be the opposite of smart,” Rodney gasped, pushing both of John’s arms away at once. “You do realize we’re in the _Jumper bay_ , right? And I report to you in the field? And I’m a _man_? I mean, is any of this ringing a bell for you, in terms of– “

“Now, see, you’re just listing off the things that make it hot,” John grinned, trying again for the zipper. He’d actually only started this to see – well, because Rodney was just so damn tightly wound, especially since – the thing. At worst, John figured the chance to freak the fuck out over something non-life-threatening might do Rodney’s nerves some good, and at best, he was pretty sure that a fast and dirty blowjob in a public place would do wonders for his own nerves. Either way, he’d been planning on just kind of going with whatever happened next, but once Rodney started doing that thing where he tried to be the voice of reason with his pupils dilated and his pants looking a whole lot tighter than they did a minute ago – well, the hell with going with the flow. John had a dog in this fight, now. He kissed Rodney again, and this time when he opened his mouth, Rodney did give him a little tongue, his hands sliding around John’s shoulders and up his back to his neck.

“Would you go for two out of three?” Rodney said raspily when the second kiss broke. “Tonight – someplace – My place?”

“My place,” John said. He figured that way if Rodney changed his mind, he could just not show up, no harm no foul.

He showed up. He even brought alcohol, although he brought it in his bloodstream. John shook his head wonderingly; it had been _years_ since he’d picked up anyone who needed to be drunk to sleep with him. It made him feel young again.

“I really can’t make sense out of you,” Rodney said, placing his hands on John’s chest. “You should be – you should be – I don’t know, stupider.”

“I should be stupid?”

“Stupid _er_. With the hair and the guns and those – smirky – sunglasses you wear– “

“My...sunglasses are smirky?”

“Yes!” Rodney said defensively. “Yes, they are! You have smirky – hair and sunglasses – and you should be much stupider than you are, and you always know what to say to people, so you should probably really loathe me, or at least pity me for what you presume is some kind of extensive childhood trauma that leads to me being....”

“An asshole? I’ve just been assuming it was congenital.”

Rodney pushed him onto the bed and knelt between his legs, resting his hands on John’s kneecaps. “Also, you’re awfully skinny, and you should have skinny chicken legs.”

“Hey,” John protested.

“I know! You don’t! You have good legs! It just defies all...common sense.”

“You’re a real sweet-talker, anybody ever tell you that?” He got his hands on Rodney’s face and pulled him closer. “How do you like it, Rodney?”

Rodney made an undignified noise, and the bridges of their noses came together, abrupt and painful. John heroically avoided swearing at him. “How do I...um.... The usual...way, I guess? Just – whatever you...usually do...I’m sure will be fine.”

Oh, _God_ , he was _that_ kind of not gay. John pushed himself up on one elbow and said, “So this is...your first time, right?” Rodney kissed him again, hard, their mouths pressed so tightly together there was no room to move. John sighed inwardly and put an arm around Rodney’s waist, rolling them both over so he was on top. “It’s okay, we won’t do anything fancy.”

Turned out, they didn’t do anything at all. He tried rubbing off against Rodney, which elicited a long, muttering stream of something that sounded disturbingly like the periodic table of elements, and then Rodney passed out cold and John took a shower. He would have been slightly pissed about the whole thing, except that Rodney muttering the periodic table in a drunken, blissful voice, his face all flushed and his hair mussed and his hands patting John’s ass clumsily? Kind of ridiculously cute. Emphasis on the “ridiculous,” but still.

He stirred and babbled vaguely when John shoved him over and climbed back into bed. “Yeah, goodnight to you, too, Valentino,” John grumbled back, trying to settle the blanket equitably around himself and Rodney’s dead weight, but then he couldn’t resist kissing the soft corner of Rodney’s frown. The original mission, he reminded himself, had been to get Rodney out from behind a locked door and interacting with other human beings again, so from a certain point of view, this was success.

John liked to think of himself as an optimist.

When he woke up, Rodney was lying on top of the blankets with a damp washcloth over his face. John yawned, scrubbed his face on the inside of his arm, and reached over to take the cloth away. Rodney made a series of rapid, meaningless gestures in the air and said, hoarsely, “No moving. No moving, no talking, no bright lights.”

Served him right, actually. John dropped the washcloth back over his face with a grin.

He sat up and swung his legs off the side of the bed, stretching luxuriously and then scratching through his hair. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Rodney had let the cloth fall onto his neck, and he was staring at John, looking lost. “Listen, don’t overthink last night, okay?” John said, patting Rodney’s thigh lightly. “It was no big deal.”

Rodney snorted, but the next words out of his mouth weren’t defensive or condescending – just a little worried, almost shy. “Should I have– ? I guess I shouldn’t have spent the night, should I?”

“It’s okay.” Rodney was actually nice to sleep with, sturdy and warm and firm. He probably didn’t even usually snore that much, when he was sober.

“But now how do I....” He gestured in the direction of the door.

“Neither of us are under house arrest, Rodney; we can come and go. On the off-chance anyone notices, we’ll just say you came by to ask me something.”

“Well, but– “

“It’s really not that tough, Rodney,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Don’t let yourself get paranoid; guys like me have been doing this for a long time.” That last bit seemed a little bit wistful to John, which was odd. Honestly, he was a naturally private person, and he didn’t employ a whole lot more discretion on the military’s account than he probably would have as a civilian. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had been John’s own policy on a lot of issues long before the USAF adopted it.

Rodney struggled to sit up, glaring at him. “Oh, well, I’m sure _guys like you_ have, but you’ll excuse me if I’m not exactly used to calculating the precise level of shame with which I should be slinking out of somebody’s bedroom. Is there some kind of formula I should be using? Number of wrinkles in my clothes plus stench of alcohol all over me minus the fact that I didn’t get past first base divided by stars on your collar?”

“Don’t get all snotty with me just because you didn’t get laid last night,” John said. “You’ve got nobody to blame but yourself for that.”

“Oh, I blame you! I blame you for this whole stupid idea, because until– “

John really just kissed him to shut him up.

The first time he had sex with Rodney McKay was at 0745, with the white sunlight of Atlantis inching across the bed as John held Rodney tightly between his thighs and whispered directions in his ear, like _breathe_ and _don’t rush it_ and _you don’t have to grab, I’m not running away_ and _seriously, breathe, Rodney_. It wasn’t good sex, except to the point that sex is inherently good – a little too stiffly rhythmic, like Rodney was counting time in his head for a ballroom dance lesson, and over more quickly than John would have liked – but that was partially his own fault for choosing that position; he’d known it would be easier on both of them from behind, but he’d figured it would help keep Rodney from panicking if they could look each other in the eye. Turned out Rodney kept his eyes closed for most of it, anyway.

He looked different, afterwards, while he jerked John off and then while he laid there on his side, his thumb stroking John’s chest. He looked good – pretty blue eyes with a little bit of sleep crud still stuck in the corner of one, his smile open and comfortable. John couldn’t help smiling back at him, even knowing that his post-coital smiles were always goofier than usual. After all, it was just Rodney. He had a thing for John when he was being goofy, always had.

He’d had a thing for John for a while now, and John had a quick, punching moment of guilt. The way Rodney was pressed against his side, the tender way he was touching John’s chest.... He probably shouldn’t have – gotten them into this at all. It felt good, the two of them lying there, relaxed and at peace with each other rather than snapping and harrying in that weird, romantic-comedy way they’d somehow fallen into; suddenly there was hardly any tension at all, just a sense of connection with this person who had, after all, _fuck_ , saved his life not even a week ago. But still, that was no excuse for not putting a stop to it earlier, not when he knew that Rodney had – some kind of emotional involvement already. There was nothing but disaster down _that_ path; John had seen it go down badly too many times to count.

“Rodney,” he said slowly, “you do – you do know this was....”

He caught on quickly and pulled his hand away. “Oh. Oh, yes. I mean, of course I– One-time thing. Yes, that’s – that’s pretty obvious, absolutely.”

“Hey,” John said softly, stroking his hand down Rodney’s side. “Doesn’t have to be a _one_ -time thing. Just, you know...we’re not...dating or anything like that.”

It seemed like Rodney hesitated for just a second, but it might have been John’s imagination, just a matter of him waiting tensely for Rodney to say something. “No. Well. Sure, but.... You’re saying, you wouldn’t mind...doing this again?”

“Nah, I don’t mind,” John said, and Rodney smiled at him, uncertainly at first, and then wider and wider until John had to laugh and kiss the smile away.

*

He kept talking to them, and they didn’t answer. Nothing happened at all.

Pterodactyls, maybe.

John’s throat was scratchy and his face was scratchy under the bristle, and he was bored and lonely and there weren’t really enough powerbars left to make piles out of at all, and he didn’t mind giving his life for the cause, but not like _this_ , this was just too fucking stupid and sad.

He was going to _kill_ , he was absolutely going to terminate his friends with extreme prejudice if they didn’t rescue him _right fucking now, now_ , before he lost his mind. Because they were out there, of course they were out there somewhere, there hadn’t been a pterodactyl for miles, there hadn’t been _anything_ on this planet except some kind of dragonfly-type insect, and rocks, and the sounds of their boots crunching and Rodney complaining, and God what he wouldn’t give for that now. Except no. Rodney was where the fuck ever Rodney was, and he was here, dehydrating and talking to fucking nobody on a radio with a dying battery.

Everything he had in here was _losing its shit_.

And if he could just think straight, or better yet, stop thinking at all – cool, bat-wing thoughts, giving him the heebie-jeebies every time they brushed past–

_they would be here by now. they’re dead, they’re all dead._

_don’t just stand there, go, get out, do you want to die here? forget them._

_they’ve forgotten you. even if they were dead, by now Atlantis would have come looking...._

_nobody’s looking._

_do you want to die here? like this, just sitting on your ass waiting for it? is that how you plan to fail this test, what kind of man you really are?_

Not thinking would definitely be the way to go, here, if at all possible.

John thumbed the radio on and said, “You guys are starting to worry me a little bit, here.”

*

He couldn’t even jerk off, because of course _that_ would be when something started to happen – and not anything like hot, friendly aliens on a vision-quest, up for an orgy.

He sort of wished he hadn’t had that thought, because it made his stomach flip over – and, when it was empty like that, flipping over led to a quick, sharp stomach cramp – from...frustration, eight different kinds of frustration. Because orgies with hot aliens weren’t entirely the useless, if intriguing, abstractions they had been back when he was a twelve-year-old jerking off to the illustrations in _Amazing Stories_. No, now there was more than a little that hit disturbingly close to home about the prospect.

So, no jerking off, but there was no law against.... Well, it was less crazy-making than certain other things he could think about, although the day when Ronon Dex was less crazy-making than practically anything....

Fine, then. All right. Desperate times and all that bullshit.

John had only ever gotten one real opportunity to see Ronon Dex naked, but he remembered enough to make the time go by.

Naked, Ronon was strong and balanced and vulnerable, his bones standing out more sharply than John would have expected, emphasizing his leanness when most people only thought about his bulk. In his imagination (and if he touched his cock, it was just a long squeeze now and then, through his pants), John stripped Ronon bare and just let him stand there. Let himself look.

There were soft places on him; John had brushed up against them before, caught little glimpses. Under his arms. His inner thighs. His lips. Undefended places; in imagination, John touched them slowly, letting the sensation sink in, letting Ronon’s eyes grow darker with dilated pupil and his ribs quiver with quickened breath.

He took Ronon by his wrist – he had delicate wrists, small hands, within the overall context of him – and held the bones gently. Kissed the palm of his hand, while the other hand came up and into John’s hair. John bent his neck under the slight pressure of the touch, toward the warmth of him, the salt-spice smell of him, smooth hairless skin and the way his back arched when John ran his thumb over the ball of his hand. Because it was the little things with Ronon – he knew that instinctively, though he couldn’t remember when and how he learned it. Maybe it was that backrub.

Those little touches, the kind that John hardly ever...seemed to find time for. No, that wasn’t true – yes, it was, but on top of that, the kind that he’d never really bothered to make time for. He just wasn’t...inclined that way, wasn’t really a sensualist in any deep-seated sense, and normally he jerked off thinking about _fucking_ , or at the very least.... Sometimes a kiss. Kissing could be nice, if you had the right partner.

But he couldn’t exactly jerk off in the cave, so he gripped himself tightly and closed his eyes and thought about sliding down to his knees, letting his lips find the vulnerable place just underneath Ronon’s last rib, kissing it softly and making him shudder. His strong, narrow hands would curl up in John’s hair and he’d breathe quick and noisy, and then when he spoke, John would feel it roll up from the center of him, low and open and physical.

Something like, _Yes. John._ Or something like, _Touch me, I want you to touch me_.

And he wouldn’t mean just.... No. Yeah, he’d mean everything. He’d mean all of it, because that’s how Ronon was.

Nothing like John.

*

Waiting paid off for him, because for a second he thought the world was caving in, and then there was something he recognized, finally, finally. A bag, military issue. _Canteens_.

Water.

He’s not going to die that day, and he’s pathetically grateful as he chugs a long swallow, then two, then three. His friends came through for him – _finally_ – and he’s not going to die that day.

There’s food, too. Yes yes yes. No MREs – powerbars. That seemed a little chintzy, but whatever, it was food, blessed food. Maybe they didn’t expect him to need much; maybe something was finally about to happen.

Well, he wouldn’t really know. He went through every pocket, every inch of the bag, and there was no message. Nothing personal at all – just a flashlight, some powerbars, some rope, a couple clips of ammo – socks? Fresh _socks_ , and John shook his head, but hey, his own were getting pretty stiff. No “Love, Everybody,” though. Nothing like that.

Fuck them, anyway. John loves _them_. There’s not a damn thing he wouldn’t do for them, and he doesn’t– He’s not that guy! He’s not somebody who doesn’t care, he’s not some self-centered Top Gun, he’s bright and he’s compassionate and he tries to keep morale up, which around here is two full-time jobs and an internship, that’s for fucking sure.

He isn’t some anonymous person; he should really get more than...anonymous commissary shit, with no note.

He knew Teyla’s handwriting, and Rodney’s. Even with all the business of Atlantis being done digitally, everyone jots things down, scribbles on things, writes something that has to be remembered. They all carried pens as part of their regular gear.

There was a pen in the backpack, which John didn’t need, because he _carries one with him_.

John is not that guy. He’s not the most expressive person in the world, not one for sentiment or declarations – although he’s not incapable of them, either, when it’s called for. He’s private, he always has been, and mostly he keeps himself to himself, but he would always...be there. He thinks he’s always been there for them.

He’s never thought of himself as somebody who can’t be reached.

*

They threw a beach party on the mainland for the first anniversary of – them. Carson wanted to call it Awakening Day and Rodney was arguing for Reclamation Day; Elizabeth thought making the holiday semi-official by naming it would have unfortunate implications of secession, and she encouraged them to call it a beach party.

It was a hundred and nine degrees out, but they put up canopies and slept in the shade most of the day, then brought out the Athosian cider kegs, fired up the grills, and started skinny dipping when it turned full dark.

“We should do this every year,” John said, wiping cider foam from his mouth. He was covered in a fine coat of salt and sand, with nothing but a towel tied around his waist like a sarong, but he was too drunk to care about scratchy substances in unfortunate places.

“I think that was the plan,” Rodney said. He was wearing a t-shirt, khaki shorts, and a fisherman’s hat; John had no idea where he got the fisherman’s hat. “Worth memorializing, don’t you think?”

“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘memorializing,’” John said – although maybe he didn’t pronounce it quite right. “Kinda makes it sound like we’re dead.”

“Three hundred sixty-five days, still alive,” Rodney said, toasting with his mug.

Ronon was in attendance, although John hadn’t been at all sure he’d come; he was still very new at the time, not even officially part of John’s team yet – that was the plan and everyone knew it, but somehow it seemed important that there still be a space left open where Ford would be, at least for this one night. Whether you wanted to think of it as a holiday or a memorial service, it was about those of them that had come through the Gate a year before, and Ford had been one of the very first.

Back then, Ronon still wasn’t so much talking to people. He walked the edges of the gathering, scuffing his feet in the sand with that head-down, shoulders-forward posture that he seemed to maintain whenever there were people around; John had gotten Ronon to meet his eyes one-on-one, but whenever he was outnumbered, Ronon seemed unable to resist going to his guard.

John watched Lorne approach him, apparently trying to induce him toward the makeshift volleyball game on behalf of the Daedalus’s team. Lorne, too, had already decided to stay on Atlantis, so in John’s mind the game was beginning to look less like Home and Visitors, more like Old Guard and Newbies. Ronon turned him down, though, and John watched Lorne slog through the sand back to Elizabeth and confer.

By John’s side, Rodney snorted. “Of course Elizabeth put him up to it,” he said, which was John’s first clue that he was even watching the same events that John was. “I swear I think she has the hots for Mr. Tall, Dark, and Carnivorous.”

“I think she thinks the same thing about me,” John said.

After a quick glance around to determine that nobody was in earshot of their little piece of dusk-cooled sand, Rodney said, “Please, everybody _knows_ you do. Your subtlety is not the stuff legends are made of; I truly do not know how you kept your job this long.”

John shrugged. “I really don’t meet that many people who do it for me,” he said, and then was surprised to shuffle back through his memory and realize how true it was. When John met people, he cataloged their attractiveness in his head, just like he assessed their height and weight and how in charge they seemed to be and how willing to draw a gun on him, but it wasn’t too often that he _felt_ , rather than just recognized that someone was gorgeous. Maybe Rodney was right; maybe he was a little bit rusty at hiding that feeling. Lack of practice and all.

There were good-looking people on Atlantis, but John didn’t remember really being hungry for anyone in the year he’d been here, except for Chaya and Ronon. Well, and Rodney, but that was – different. That was about something else completely.

“Oh, would you _stop_?” Rodney said, with an edge of real irritation, not Rodney’s default-setting irritation.

John had been off inside his own head, but his eyes had tracked Ronon on auto-pilot as he went back to the grills for more elk-like-beast burgers, creating the effect of staring. He grinned, focusing in for real on Ronon’s bare, scarred back, and said, “What, I’m not allowed to look?”

“Oh, you’re allowed to make an ass of yourself. Far be it from me to take away your divinely ordained right to think with your testicles.”

“Lay off. It’s Reclamation Day. And,” he added after a booze-lag in his thought processes, “since when are you starring in the role of my jealous boyfriend?”

“You wouldn’t know what _jealous_ meant if you had schematics and a DNA sample,” Rodney said. He made it sound like an insult, which John found amusing.

He stood up, brushing sand off his arms, and said, “Rodney McKay, light of my life, dearest treasure of my soul, my one and only hunka-hunka burning love, how about you escort me to that cooler over there, where I will drink to thine eyes and then possibly get a conga line started?”

“I’ll go over there to assist all right-thinking citizens of Atlantis in _keeping_ you from starting a conga line,” Rodney grumbled, but he took John’s hand and let him help boost him up to his feet.

“Seriously, where the hell did you get that hat?”

“Shut up,” Rodney said, and left his hand in John’s longer than he absolutely had to.

*

_This is Sheppard. I’m pretty sure you can’t hear me._

Because at the very least, he didn’t think they’d keep this game going for days, just to make fun of him. No, they’d probably been very _respectful_ ; there had probably been a funeral service or something – dress uniforms and clean t-shirts for the civilians. Maybe they hadn’t even given away his fucking apartment yet.

_I’ve rationed what little I have for as long as I could_

He’d waited almost two weeks – _two weeks_. Who else would have done that? It sure as hell wasn’t John’s natural inclination, to sit around picking his toenails and counting down to the next third of a powerbar he’d scheduled for himself, staring at a blank goddamn wall and waiting, waiting, waiting day and night to see a familiar face. Did they really think he was going to do that forever?

They probably didn’t think he would do it this long. They probably thought he’d get bored in thirty-six hours and forget about them all. It wouldn’t be any different from the rest of his life, standing at parade rest while somebody who, you know, somebody you might think would _know_ him a little bit better than that said, _All you need is a little fortitude, Johnny, quitters don’t get ahead in this world_ or _Don’t treat this as a joke, son, you owe us nothing less than your full commitment_.

John didn’t know what it was about him that made people think he wasn’t...serious about things.

He didn’t walk out on people. He was a fucking Lieutenant Colonel, you didn’t stumble into that by accident. He had all the goddamn, motherfucking _fortitude_ in the fucking world, and he didn’t know why....

The whole reason he’d rationed the food as carefully as he had was because he thought he might have to hang in there for a while. He’d been ready for that. He asked for a lot of loyalty from his people, but he gave it, too. He’d wanted to make the staying and waiting thing work.

_I’m gonna have to go further out._

But he wasn’t going to die here, not in full view of wide, green spaces. He wasn’t going to die of thirst while bucolic forest streams burbled away a twenty minutes’ walk from where he sat, and nobody could ask that of him, nobody could possibly expect him to.

If anyone gave a damn what he did now.

_indication of where I go, as I go_

And then he stood there, staring at this goddamn piece of plastic in his hands that he’d been pretending for weeks was some point of connection back to – his home, his life, Rodney, Teyla, Ronon, Atlantis – to everything.

It didn’t bring him closer. It didn’t do anything.

He talked to it like it was a person, because he needed a person to talk to, but it wasn’t. It was a machine, and not even a cool Ancient device that read his mind, but a walkie-talkie like you could walk into any RadioShack on Earth and buy. And it didn’t have a damn thing to do with the person he really needed to talk to, who wasn’t listening and didn’t answer. Who normally wore John’s nerves to a silk thread running his mouth, but now, when John needed someone desperately, had not one fucking thing to say. Not one thing.

By the way, I love you, Rodney said to him, and John had taken it so fucking seriously – fortitude, commitment, everything he had in him. He’d looked long and hard at his life, changed his mind, changed _himself_ , just because of that, because of something that Rodney said to him late one night -- sleepy and sex-drunk and adrenaline-rushed, but John still hadn’t questioned it. He had taken Rodney at his word. He’d even...hurt someone who mattered to him, someone he’d never, ever wanted to hurt. He’d hated doing it, but he remembered what Rodney said, and he’d wanted to take it seriously. Take it all the way.

And now Rodney and his fucking mouth, which had gotten John into more headaches than he knew how to count, had not one thing to say. Not a word.

At least not to John. He was probably still talking Atlantis’s collective ear off, bugging the people who were silently praying to their various higher powers to strike Rodney down with a nice, non-lethal case of strep, while John was sitting here willing to sell everything he owned just to hear the fucking radio crackle on and Rodney’s voice telling him some long story about...particle accelerators, or fried chicken, or whatever damn thing Rodney’s stories ended up being about after John quit listening to everything but the cadences of his voice.

He was probably talking to _Ronon_. He was probably chattering blithely away every time Ronon didn’t stop his mouth up with a kiss, because it never seemed to bother Ronon in the slightest. John could see him, lying in Rodney’s bed, smiling up at him indulgently while Rodney set up a sprightly ragtime rhythm, talk talk kiss talk kiss talk. And it was all good to Ronon – every time he let that hard-ass Satedan stoicism relax for a second, he looked at Rodney like everything he said was interesting, like everything he did was a gift, and John suspected it wasn’t exactly a coincidence that he hadn’t been in love with Rodney until he started to ask himself what Ronon was seeing when he looked at Rodney McKay like he was something Ronon could never in his wildest dreams imagine walking away from.

_Sheppard out._

*

Rodney called roll every night, or at least that’s how John thought of it. He liked to sit up with Rodney in the labs, watching his deft fingers control the security screens, flipping from hallway to hallway, blue schematics and soft red heat signatures of everyone in their rooms, in their labs, in the common spaces, on duty. He’d set up the systems to tick everyone off individually once he located them – or maybe he hadn’t set it up, maybe that was just what Atlantis did – and John watched the names scroll past slowly, a patched-in screen translating the Ancient into English. The whole display went dark when it was finished searching, and then popped up a list of missing personnel, which Rodney cross-referenced on his laptop with the short list Elizabeth kept of who was on leave and who was off-world, and then it was over. It was always the last thing Rodney did before he left the lab at night.

It was maybe a little bit of a violation of privacy, but then, John knew as well as anyone that there wasn’t really an expectation of privacy on a military base – apparently not even a quasi-military base like Atlantis. And anyway, Rodney never seemed to take an interest in where anybody was or what they were up to; he was all business. He only needed to know that they were here.

John wondered if it was part of Rodney’s job, or just a thing he needed to do. He suspected it was the latter.

The only time John ever saw him react, he was working the kinks out of Rodney’s shoulders while he finished the roll call and came to bed, and out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Rodney had paused on a single hallway, mostly scientists’ living quarters. John looked over the screen and didn’t see anything weird. He looked at the patch display and saw _Norris, Madeline_ and underneath it, _Dex, Ronon_.

“We’ve got to fix that,” Rodney said distantly. “It’s wrong. His name’s entered wrong, it’s....”

“Yeah,” John said.

“Dex is his first name,” Rodney said, unnecessarily. John wondered if maybe he just wanted an excuse to say it out loud.

Rodney and Ronon hardly ever spoke to each other anymore, except when they went off-planet. John had discovered yet another reason to look forward to away missions; he liked waiting for that moment when their artificial distance started to bore them, when one of them would forget for just a second and say something human, when the other would answer back and not bother to regret it. If you only knew them from missions, sometimes you’d think they really were friends.

It made it even worse to watch them bounce with perfect grace and timing off each other’s outer orbit at home, staying a hundred yards away and pretending it wasn’t on purpose at all.

John hadn’t expected the break between them to run so deep. He and Ronon could still stand each other’s company; they were running together again, eating meals together when Rodney couldn’t be pried loose from the lab. On the nights when there was a movie playing in the cafeteria after hours, Ronon sat down beside him and let John play cultural attache for him, explaining whatever Ronon gestured at with a frustrated little flick of his hand. Rodney and about eight other scientists had been banned from movie night months ago for their inability to watch the damn movie without getting distracted and striking up conversations about work with each other.

Whatever ambiguity might or might not still be in his relationship with Ronon, they were definitely friends. Rodney and Ronon.... God knew what they were, but it was both a lot more and a lot less than that.

“Did you ever think about just...talking to him?” John said. He’d never been a person to offer unsolicited advice – even when his advice was solicited, he usually tried to get out of it – but this was sort of about John, too. He figured he had the right.

“And say what?” Rodney said. From the tone, it seemed like he was going to launch into one of those little Rodney monologues, where he answered his own question with something specious and snide. But this time he didn’t; he just let the question stand. Abruptly, he seemed to remember what he was doing, and he flipped on to the next corridor.

“Just _talk_ to him. Like regular people? Like you talk to everybody who doesn’t run away fast enough? I mean, if you think about it.... It’s not like he’s so great at striking up conversations with people. He’s probably spent more time with you than anyone since he got here, and– “

Rodney turned his head and gave John a reproachful look, as if he’d said something way out of bounds. Just by mentioning that they _knew_ each other? That was how careful he was supposed to be now? The whole thing was insane. “Yes, I’ll just invite him for tea,” Rodney said. “I’ll ask him if Dr. Norris is well, and what he’s bench-pressing these days, and, oh yes, if it was the slightest bit difficult for him to _break up with me_.”

“You really are a dick sometimes,” John said. “Do you really have your head so far up your ass that you don’t know whether or not it was _difficult_ for him? Is that why you think it’s okay to cut him off from one of the only real friends he has here – because you think maybe he just doesn’t fucking care either way? You know what, I don’t believe even you are that out of touch with reality, so just don’t go there.”

Rodney watched his own hands carefully as he worked. “We were never really that close,” he muttered.

“You’re such a liar. I’ll bet you a million bucks you know ten things about him that even I don’t know, right off the top of your head.” Rodney talked like a champion, but the surprising thing about him was that he had a tendency to listen, too. John wasn’t the only person who’d been surprised, in the year and a half he’d known Rodney, to find himself getting sucked into the flow of Rodney’s conversation and saying things about himself he’d never planned to say. It was just so easy to do, with Rodney.

But Rodney shook his head decisively. “You think he suddenly turns into a different _person_ when he’s with me?” John didn’t exactly know how to say, _sure, maybe – I do, after all_ , so he didn’t say anything. “He doesn’t talk to me, either, I don’t know his deeply cherished secrets. I don’t even....” John waited it out. “I mean, he’s told me things,” Rodney relented. “Facts and things like that, just what would – what you might tell anybody.” If you were Rodney McKay and not Ronon Dex, but John let that go, too. “I know he grew up on a farm, I know he likes pigs. I know he has a slightly disturbing tendency to fuck his commanding officers. I know he likes Jackie Chan movies and he believes in God, or the local equivalent, and he’s very good at some kind of Satedan sport that sounds essentially like attack-skiing. Does any of this sound to you like the foundations of a profoundly intimate personal relationship?”

With Ronon Dex, yes. But John only said, “Okay, fine. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

He was a whole lot sorrier later that night, when Rodney was lying against him running his fingers over John’s nipple, and then out of nowhere said, “I probably know him better than I know you.”

“What?” John said. He didn’t know if – in what sense – _what?_

“Dex,” he said, as if that were the unclear part. “I may have...misled you, before. We used to talk quite a bit.”

Which John had known, and in fact, he was the one that said so in the first place. “And you and I don’t?”

“No, you and I talk a lot more. But not about the same kinds of things. He doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s something he’s decided it’s important for you to know. I know his parents both died when he was a child; he doesn’t even remember his mother. He _told_ me that. You’ve never told me...that.”

“Because that didn’t happen to me,” John said shortly. Jesus, was he not interested in having this conversation at all, let alone being asked to submit it for evaluation in some kind of fucked-up romantic competition with Ronon.

“I’ve read your file, Sheppard. Your mother died when you were– “

“When I was fourteen. Look, this isn’t – this isn’t fair, how come I don’t get to decide what I think is important for you to know?”

Rodney propped himself up, the better to give John the full force of his condescending _do not try to deceive a superior intellect_ look. “You would like me to believe that _your mother’s death_ didn’t strike you as in any way something your lover might be interested in?”

“Why, were you worried about Thanksgiving dinner?” John snapped, and then – no, oh no, he did _not_ deserve the wounded look, this was getting less and less fair by the second. “Look. Rodney. I’m not hiding anything from you, I just never brought it up because I don’t – think about it that much. I mean, it was a long time ago, and I wasn’t even living with her at the time, and it was just.... It was sad, I wish she hadn’t died, but it’s not...a really big thing for me.”

After a moment, Rodney poked him hard in the ribs and said, “You’re lying. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Ow! I’m not lying. Why do you think I’d lie about it?”

“I’m sure I can’t speak to your motives, but you’re _lying_ , and do you know how I know that?” John didn’t answer, not that he was really supposed to. “Because my mother was a drunken lunatic with borderline OCD and suicidal tendencies who Jeannie and I used to hope and pray would stay in bed for days on end because she was even less fun to live with when she was actually trying to parent us, and I was thirty-three years old when she died, and it _still_ hurt like hell when I heard it had happened. _Because she was my mother._ ”

So fucking unfair. Rodney could just _say_ these things, just come out with them from nowhere, and then he looked at John like he was supposed to be keeping up, when Truth or Dare wad definitely not a game John had ever volunteered to play. Unless you counted just the whole...relationship thing to be implied consent. Which Rodney probably did.

“Fine,” John said, trying hard to say it without a snap in his voice. “We can talk about it, if you want to. Her name was Maureen, she was a good mother, we were pretty close. She and my dad had a shitty marriage, and when I was ten, she ran away with a lieutenant under his command. She wanted custody of me, but my father got a judge to say she was unfit, and I didn’t get to see her very much after that. I started military school in the seventh grade. She sent me lots of presents; I imagine she probably did before that, too, but it’s funny that I never got any of them when I was living with my father. I loved her. They sent the vice-principal to tell me she had an aneurism and died in the middle of the night. I knew she had a heart condition, but when you’re a kid, you never really think about something like that happening. She was thirty-four; she and I had the same birthday, twenty years apart. I was _sad_. I think it would’ve been swell if she could have seen me – graduate, fly a plane, get a commendation for valor, I think she would have been very proud, but that’s not how things happened, and I accepted that a long time ago. I don’t know what she’d make of you, but she was a big romantic, so I’m sure she’d be – you know, happy for me, that I met somebody. Okay? I mean, is that what you needed to know, are we all better now?” And there was that snap he’d been worried about. But, Jesus, what went through Rodney’s head sometimes? You couldn’t just demand that someone....

“Was that really so hard?” Rodney said patronizingly, and John pulled the pillow from under his head and hit Rodney in the face with it.

“Just don’t psychoanalyze me, okay?” he said, once he’d gotten his pillow back and they were settling into sleep. “I really hate that.”

“All right,” Rodney said. “I’m not very good at it, anyway.”

Only four people in the city had the security codes to get into the system that Rodney checked every night, and he and John were two of them. Rodney had stopped worrying about where his blip on the map came to rest for the night a long time ago.

*

He wasn’t that attracted to Teer, although he began to get the feeling after a while that she was attracted to him. He supposed it figured; in a year and a half, only two people had really gotten his engine running – well, and Rodney, of course – so what were the chances that there would be someone here?

Given that he was staring down the barrel of the rest of his natural life in this place, that was a little bit unfortunate.

But he liked her. She drove him a little crazy sometimes, with the nattering about Ascension, the constant smiling, but maybe.... Hell, Rodney had driven him a _lot_ crazy; that was how he got _involved_ with Rodney. And that worked out okay, sort of. Up until the whole abandonment thing at the very end, it had worked out really well.

John had really been in love with him.

He was probably still really in love with him, but he tried not to think about it in the present tense like that. Rodney was part of his past – Atlantis, Earth, all of it, was part of the past, and if he didn’t learn how to think of it that way, he’d snap. You could only live with so much hope.

It hadn’t even been six months, and John almost couldn’t bear to hope anymore. Sometimes he thought of Ronon, and he thought – seven years. Seven years. John didn’t know if he had that kind of strength, although maybe you never knew until you had to try. He didn’t think he did, though – strength to survive it, sure, but to be a human being afterwards, somebody who believed in something, who was – like Ronon? John doubted it. Sometimes he dreamed of Ronon the way he’d first found him, stalking the shadows of that toxic planet, words unfolding rusty and dark from disuse off his tongue; John had been afraid of him then, an unknown quantity in the extreme, but in his dreams now, he recognized Ronon’s eyes and knew right away that John had found something lost, something he shouldn’t let slip away again.

He liked Teer, he liked her family; they’d gone a long way out of their way to take care of him, and that meant a lot. She was easy to be with, and if sometimes – a lot of the time – he missed the pressure-cooker of Atlantis and the hard burn of Rodney’s affection and aggression, that was no reason to take it out on her. She hadn’t gotten him into this situation, after all.

He tried not to think of the past, but he still couldn’t help visiting the cave now and then. The ashes from his fire stayed sheltered from wind and rain; the arrow he’d built for them remained unmoved. He neatened it up a bit, even if it didn’t really need that, and thought, At least I did my best. Maybe someday they’d find out about it somehow, and they’d know that he really did...miss them.

Some days he hated them all, no one more than Rodney McKay. It wasn’t supposed to end like this, after all. Death, yeah. One of them would grieve, or more likely they’d cash it in together in some all-encompassing apocalypse, or maybe some minor screw-up involving spears or volcanos or what the hell ever, something that got out of control too fast to stay ahead of. But, end result: death. John could handle that. He hadn’t come to the Pegasus galaxy banking on a long, peaceful life.

John wasn’t keen to die, but he wasn’t afraid of it, either. This was something else entirely. He’d never thought that one door falling in love could open for him would lead to a long, peaceful lifetime of regrets.

Mostly, he hated them because it gave him something to focus on. Something besides wondering where they all were now, what they were doing, if they were alive or dead or happy or in mourning for him. It gave him something to do besides...mourning, and living with bitterness was easier than living with dread, when there was nothing he could do now to protect them.

Teer.... It wasn’t that he couldn’t see himself building something with her, because he could. It was just that she wanted so much of him, wanted him to change himself into the person that could follow her on this grand adventure she thought she was on, and John was pushing forty and he’d just finished changing everything for somebody. Doing it again didn’t sound like fun at all. He wasn’t so sure he was looking to build something, at this point in his life.

Making this thing with Rodney work had taken more from John than he’d even known he had. It wasn’t something he could just snap his fingers and start again from scratch.

And anyway, just because she was somebody he’d found himself coming to like...didn’t make her another Rodney. John didn’t know if he was a romantic, wasn’t at all convinced he believed in once-in-a-lifetime, but he had to admit that he was pushing forty, and there had only been one Rodney McKay. So what were the chances that there would be another one here?

He didn’t know what to make of it when he found the second backpack. By that time it had been six months, and he didn’t know what to do with hope anymore – couldn’t trust it, and couldn’t let it go.

If this was an Outer Limits episode, it was pretty sloppily written, because six months in, John didn’t know any more about what kind of a man he was. He thought he maybe knew a whole lot less.

But he brought it home with him, and as soon as he saw Teer, he found himself spilling everything to her, and he recognized with some amazement that the tone in his voice was happiness. _My friends_ , he said, and as soon as the words came out of his mouth, he was sure for the first time that too much hope was better than too little, that what he felt was still love and not hate at all.

It just figured that would be the same night Teer would decide to want more.

 _I’ve been able to close my eyes and see your face my entire life_ , she told him, and really, what do you say to that? I hope you’ve made a mistake, because if I’m all the destiny you’re slated to get....

No matter how much she’d saved up to give to him, it wasn’t going to make John...something he wasn’t. He felt like she should at least understand that, before she made any decisions. He tried to tell her – at least that he didn’t think he’d be going with her, if and when she went anywhere. It wasn’t right to keep that to himself. Not that she believed him, but at least he could say he tried.

All that said, though.... He did like Teer. She’d tried so hard to make him feel at home here, and it wasn’t her fault at all that there was so much going on in John’s life that he couldn’t settle in – that half or more of him was always a million miles away, love and war both sunk so deeply inside of him that he couldn’t lay them aside without tearing himself in half. He had all these commitments other places, but that wasn’t...that was never Teer’s fault.

He didn’t know when he’d gotten to the point where he wanted to sleep with her, but he did. He hadn’t even realized until he put his hands to her face how hungry he was for someone to touch; John wasn’t a touchy-feely person by nature, but he’d gotten used to a certain amount of contact, then lost it all in one fell swoop. Having it back again felt a lot better than he’d expected it to – and he’d expected it to feel pretty damn nice.

They fucked with him on his back, her hair swinging in his face, her eyes wide but shadowed as she leaned over him. He’d been down for so long, turning his losses and his disappointments over and over in his mind until he’d worn them smooth, that it was more than a little amazing to realize that his body knew what it wanted just as much as it ever did. He moved her hand across his chest until she got the hang of it and started touching him on her own initiative, and he thought, _The last time I was somebody’s first, it was Rodney_. For a second, it almost felt like Rodney was there with him, and that was amazing to John, too, because all he’d had of Rodney was absence for a long, long time.

He’d never hear the fucking _end_ of it if Rodney were to find out about this. That idea made John laugh out loud, breathlessly, and Teer smiled and ran her hand up his neck, and John tipped his head back on the bed and thought, _The hell with you, McKay, I still love you, and if you think you can get rid of me after everything I’ve put up with from you, you can forget about it._

Whatever faint, lingering sense John had once had that he knew where his life was going was ancient history by the time he made love to Teer with Rodney’s name on the tip of his tongue; that was the only lesson he’d really learned so far from all of this. No guarantees, not ever.

He was lying awake when the sun came up, with Teer curled heavily against him, more unsure than ever of where he was headed, of what he was capable of becoming and what he was willing to become. But he felt alive again for the first time in ages, his blood hot and fast-moving with afterglow and change, and he didn’t understand why anyone would want to give this up. He would much rather be amazed than wise.

*

“See you tonight,” Rodney whispered to him, with a jaunty smile that the rest of the world read as gloating over his latest scientific achievement, but that John knew was really just dirty.

Afternoon would have been better, but Rodney had work to do, and after all, it had been less than a day for him. John tried not to be pissed off about that; you could legitimately blame Rodney for a lot of things, but not _time_. Anyway, that gave John a chance to have a nice, long shower and a nap. He tried not to feel mean-spirited as he shaved; he wasn’t doing it just to spite Rodney and his jones for men with beards, not at all. He just didn’t feel like himself with it – which for a while had been a benefit, but he was home now.

He was home.

He kept trying to check his e-mail, the security reports on the server, and then remembering that he hadn’t missed anything because nothing had happened because he’d been gone for half a day. Christ, there were some missions where they spent almost as long looking for a place to land the Jumper as he’d spent as a missing person. But it was still strange, to search for signs of change in everything he saw and come up empty every time.

“You coming or what?” he said when he woke up from his nap and radioed McKay at 2100. The suns had set while he was out of it, leaving everything in darkness except the edges of his door, which he’d set to glow faintly blue at all times – just enough light to keep from breaking your neck by, if you wanted to get up and go somewhere in the middle of the night without waking any scientists who might be sleeping lightly in your bed.

“Patience, Colonel,” he said, and he was goddamned lucky they were on the radio, or John might have punched him right then and there. _Patience?_ “I’m not – this is – look, it’s too complicated to explain, I’ll be there when I can get away. I’ll be there.”

“Right, fine,” he muttered as he cut the switch. Waiting, then. His very favorite thing.

If John didn’t have a lifetime’s worth of guilt for how the whole thing went down, he would have been angry, because okay, his timing was bad, but Ronon’s? Ronon’s timing was _bad_. Good, perfect. Whatever.

John had never seen him miss.

“I need to ask you something,” he said while the door closed, which was weird. Ronon wasn’t into that thing where you ease in, didn’t do _You got a second?_ or _Mind if I join you?_ He picked his moment, the moment where he could scent weakness, blood in the water like he’s a goddamn shark, and he fired just exactly as many shots as he needed to. John figured it had been a long time since Ronon could afford to waste ammo.

“Not now,” he said shortly. Not now. Not now. Jesus, not now, because he was still weak on his feet like a newborn – home again after so long, hopeful again after so long, Jesus, happy, happy like he’d almost come to accept he never would be again, in the place he belongs, with the person he belonged with, even if that person couldn’t seem to clear his schedule for the evening, and God, John really, really wished Rodney had gotten here sooner, because he was like kryptonite to Ronon these days, and John knew he needed a defense against this. Everything he was feeling was too new, too good, and he was stark naked like this, nothing at all to hold him back from....

“Sorry,” Ronon said shortly. “I have to. I need to know – about that place. What they did.” He moved forward, graceful, perfectly silent in ways nobody that big should be, until John found himself listening for breath, a heartbeat, mesmerized and unnerved by the quietness of him. He couldn’t hear anything, but he could see dimly in the blue light, he could smell, he could feel Ronon’s heat too close to his skin. He lowered his head so the eye contact was better (John remembered how he used to do that to hide, to slip away from people, and now he does it to get in under John’s guard, and God, it works, it never fucking fails) and said, “Please. Tell me how they did it.”

“How…what?”

“What d’you call it? Ascension? You were there six months, you had to see—“

“Shit, I don’t know.” His skin was prickling, heat and want and disappointment. Thank God he wasn’t here to – Why the hell wasn’t he here to -- He wanted to talk about _Ascension?_ “They meditate.”

Ronon made an impatient face and said, “Yeah, obviously. I mean – how do they breathe, how do they sit? Do they do certain things, say things – mantras?” John continued to look at him, confused and somewhat ego-bruised, until Ronon broke off and turned away, grumbling, “Forget it, you don’t know, you weren’t watching.”

“I didn’t _care_ ,” John says, because it wasn’t like he was unobservant; it was _boring_ , that’s all. “Why do _you_ care?”

He looked over his shoulder at John and twisted his head a little, a shrug that conveyed his utter bafflement over the question. “I don’t see why you don’t,” Ronon said, surprisingly soft.

“Because I like being _alive_. Ascension is – it’s a bad gig, Ronon. Life as a beam of light? What the fuck? Sooner or later we all have to shuffle off the ol’ mortal coil, but I want that to be as long from now as it can be – and don’t say you don’t get that, because you fight pretty hard to keep on living, so I know you believe in your afterlife or whatever, but you’re in no hurry to get there, I’ve noticed.”

“This is different,” Ronon said. “This isn’t death, it’s enlightenment. How can that not mean anything to you?”  
“I like my body. I like jogging, I like turkey sandwiches, I like the way my stomach drops in a freefall, I like getting a buzz, I like getting my dick sucked.” Okay, tactical error. Ronon’s eyes went dark, and he’d turned back by that point, but there was still no direct reaction to that as far as John could see. John cleared his throat and tried to steer on around. “What can I say? It’s like the difference between flag football and real football – if you aren’t worried about breaking your bones, it’s just not the same.”

Ronon seemed to swallow before he spoke, deep and steady. “Don’t talk to me about fear,” he said. “You don’t know.”

“I do know. You’re not the only person in the world who’s ever fought for his life.”

Ronon snapped, his hand closing like jaws around John’s arm, pulling his hand up against Ronon’s chest, and John couldn’t even twitch. “ _Animals_ do that,” he said. “They made me live like that, like I was an animal, and then I come here and that’s how everyone looks at me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this! I had a code once, I had faith, I had a _life_.”

“This is life!”

“This is blood! This is starving and always fighting yourself while you’re trying to fight your enemy, because you’re too scared or you’re too mad and you can’t think straight until you get it under control! You know what life is? Life is the itch you get on your nose when you’re trying to sit still and listen, the leg cramps you get in your defensive position, it’s working all day every day to be strong and still not being strong enough to hold-- Life is the way I want to fuck you every single minute of my life and I can’t! This -- you want this? You can _have_ this. If what they had was peace, I _want it _.”__

He tasted like blood, too, when John kissed him, and then the sharp simmer of pain kicked in and John recognized the taste as his own blood, from his lip. He didn’t care. He had a lifetime’s worth of regrets in six months, and this was half the list. His hands scrabbled over Ronon’s back without being able to get hold, so he wrapped his leg around Ronon’s instead so that he didn’t slide away. Ronon had one hand on his face, his hard thumb braced painfully right under John’s chin, and he didn’t care, he didn’t care.

He’d rather die than go up in smoke, go up as white light – he’d rather die like _this_ , red in tooth and claw. Ronon could break his neck right now, and he’d be grateful he hadn’t died in a fucking meadow of wildflowers somewhere, that he died with his mouth sore and his heart pounding and every inch of him awake.

Ronon got his free hand in between them and shoved John’s upper body back by his shoulder. “You…” he said, accusing and helpless and irritated at once. He shook his head, at a loss for words.

“I’ve had some time to think,” John said dryly. Not all of his thoughts had been, well, sane, but a few of them had been works of genius.

“The last thing you’ve been doing with your time is thinking,” Ronon said, beating him for _dry_ at a walk.  
“You and I—“

Ronon shoved again – not too hard, just as hard as he needed to in order to dislodge John. No wasted ammo. “You,” Ronon said, “are the opposite of peace.”

“Now, I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty laid-back guy,” he said, reaching for Ronon’s shoulders.

Ronon twisted a little bit as he took John’s wrists and pushed them away – just enough to make his point. John didn’t mind the sting. “Everything about you hurts,” he said, his voice quiet and even. Peaceful, almost. It stilled John where he stood. Ronon shook his head once and took a step backwards. “Everything you do.”

“I want to make it up to you,” John said – not a seduction line, but just the truth. Because he’d hurt this man who’d placed himself entirely under John’s protection, and it wasn’t right, and it hadn’t saved either of them from anything.

But he pushed John’s hands away again as John reached for him and said, “Nothing you do can make it right. Stop, listen to me,” he insisted as John opened his mouth to argue. “You are my _commander_ , John, you’re an _officer_.”

“Please, _please_ shut up about that. It doesn’t matter, okay? I’m talking about human beings here, not rank.”

“So am I. You made this choice. You’re the one who thinks it’s wrong. Nobody but you.”

“I _don’t_ think it’s– “

“You’ve been through something. What you think right now– You’re all twisted up.” He touched John’s chest, his arm stiff but his fingers curving in like they wanted to melt their way through his shirt. “I’m a farmer’s son. I know that nothing grows in poisoned earth. John, if you really feel something for me, don’t – ruin it this way. I’d rather be almost anything than...the thing you’re sorry you couldn’t walk away from when you needed to.”

He tried to step away, and that was just – it was just – too much waiting, too long with nothing to hold onto but hope and dread and fortitude, and he needed his fucking payoff. He needed all of this to be worth something in the end. John grabbed two fists full of worn, warm sweater and said, “ _Don’t leave_. Stay with me. Don’t leave. Don’t leave.”

Everything about Ronon was warm. He pulled John into his arms, warm body, warm hands wiping warm blood from John’s mouth, and he’d just been by himself for so fucking long. Nothing had changed since he went away except himself. “I’m sorry,” Ronon mumbled into his hair. “I should have gone in for you. I shouldn’t have let anyone talk me out of it.”

John wished to God someone had, but.... “It was the right call not to. Nobody knew what was going on.”

“I knew you were in there alone.”

John grinned against his chest. “Forget it. I’m glad I didn’t have to split my powerbars with you.”

Ronon smoothed his hands up John’s back, sneaking them up to his arms, and when it was too late for John to tell him no, he had him by the arms and was pushing him away. “I can’t stay.”

 _Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay._ Jesus, didn’t _anyone_ have to stay with him? He tried so hard; didn’t someone have to meet him halfway for once? “No,” John said, an edge of desperation in his voice.

“Thought you might have learned something from all this,” Ronon said, his eyes kind and laughing. John couldn’t stay pissed off at anyone with eyes like that. Ronon put his hand briefly to John’s chest, then briefly to his own. “This is nothing,” he said. “This is just bones. It’s the other part that lasts forever. I love you from that part of me. But I can’t stay.”

John thought he might have kind of whited out at that point, because he didn’t clearly remember Ronon actually leaving. He didn’t clearly remember anything until Rodney got there and found him sitting on the foot of his bed, with a whole lot of busy, echoing nothing crashing around in his brain.

“You shaved,” Rodney said in obvious disappointment, stroking his clean cheek. He grabbed Rodney’s wrist and looked up at him. All those months, all those things he thought he was dying to say to Rodney – he couldn’t remember any of that. He wasn’t sure of anything except that Rodney was the one door that was always open for him, the one thing in his life that he’d built with his own hands and not managed to knock down afterwards. Rodney frowned at him, at his silence, maybe, and said, “Listen, I don’t.... I’m not going to ask you if you slept with her.”

“I did,” he said.

“Okay, I wasn’t going to ask you because I _really, really_ didn’t want to know, so thanks a lot.”

“But you assumed, and I wanted you – I want you to know, we’d only been sleeping together for a couple of weeks. I just – thought I should tell you, I waited a long time for you. I really did wait for you....”

Rodney pressed him down to the bed, crawling busily over him and stripping off clothing right and left, but it was all oddly asexual. He curled around John, both of them naked and holding as much of each other as they could in their hands, but somehow all John felt was safe. All he felt was home. “I was going to yell at you,” Rodney said against his ear, “for not having any faith in me. I can’t believe you really thought – well, that _any_ of us weren’t moving entire _solar systems_ to get to you. But especially me. Do you really not...think I take this seriously? You and me?”

John laughed roughly. “Go ahead and yell.”

“Well, you’re sucking a lot of the fun of it,” Rodney said, a bit huffily. “But I will point out that the moral high-ground here totally goes to me.”

“Whatever,” John said, and maybe it sounded dismissive, but what he really meant was _You can say whatever you want to me, just keep talking, just give me that – you – us._

*

The food wasn’t too hard to get hold of – John wasn’t a mafioso of snack food like some people he could name, but he had a trick or two up his sleeve – and the candles were even easier. The wine was tough; there was plenty of booze stashed here and there in Atlantis, and John had always made it his business to know exactly where, but only a few people were hanging onto decent bottles of wine, and all of them were holding out hope that there could be a special occasion in their own futures. John hated to crush that hope, but seriously, this goddamn city owed him _so_ big by this point. He wanted the fucking wine.

He scored a little flask of brandy just by accident, and he took that over to Teyla’s quarters after he finished with the table and hit send on the e-mails.

“John,” she said, arching her eyebrows at him in surprise. “Please come in.”

Teyla had a sexy bedroom – all kinds of rich colors and textures and classy lighting. He’d done his best to achieve the same vibe in Rodney’s room, but he’d never been much of an interior decorator, and Rodney didn’t have much to work with. John sat down in a chair by her bed and held out the flask, which she leaned sideways at the waist to take from him in a really improbable yoga move that should in no way look so easy.

“Very good,” she said, after sampling the brandy. She didn’t ask him why he was there. She didn’t ask him anything at all. John leaned his head back and let her keep on with her stretching; he would never, ever complain about Teyla’s meditation again. At least her kind turned her into something that – well, not that John could ever see himself being, but definitely someone that he could understand. Also, it was a lot more fun to watch.

2130 came and went, and nobody radioed John in a wild flurry of outrage and recriminations, so.... That was good. That meant things were going well.

“You have me very curious,” Teyla said at last, sitting on her bed, their knees almost touching and her bare feet resting half on top of his boots. “Anything that you chose to say to me, you know I would keep in the strictest confidence.”

And that was so fucking practical, and so sweet, and so very Teyla that he almost wanted to hug her – but he wasn’t _that_ far gone from normal, so he just touched her hand, hard and short, and let her go again before she could squeeze back. “I just need to be out of the way for a while,” he said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not in the least. You are most undemanding company.” She smiled at him, and God, she absolutely knew. Of course she did. Teyla would have to be a hell of a lot stupider than she was to spend all this time with the three of them and not know exactly what was playing out under her nose. She probably understood the whole thing a lot better than he did.

It had been a few years since John had done the therapy thing – he didn’t count a couple of routine check-ins with Heightmeyer. It had been a whole lot of years since he’d actually wanted to, and not just felt vaguely obligated for the sake of the people under his command. Suddenly, looking at Teyla as she radiated strength and compassion and flexibility in the candlelight, he wanted it again, or at least wanted....

“Can I tell you something?” he said softly.

“Of course, John. I would be honored.”

“My mother...fell in love when she was thirty. With – fell in love with another man, I mean – not my dad. And she had to leave. People always think...that I might have – whatever, trust issues, or abandonment issues – because she left us, and then because she – she died. Not too long after. But I never blamed my mother. I really never did. I wanted her to be happy, you know? Hell, if I could have traded my dad in for an upgrade, I’d have done it, too.”

“You have always had a generous spirit,” she said, almost sadly, and John got the creepy feeling that she knew _everything_. Those bastards in the kitchens had probably let something slip about the chicken cordon bleu.

“I blamed my father,” he said. And this was old therapeutic ground for sure, but not – never in quite this context before. “Because she – she didn’t do anything wrong. She just fell in love. You can’t help that, right?”

“I am given to understand you cannot,” Teyla said.

“My mother loved me. My mother was _crazy_ about me.” He could remember – her hands when she tucked him into bed, squeezing his hands – the way she called him _my guy_ and _handsome_ and John but never, ever Johnny, he’d always hated that name. All he could ever remember of her was love. “And he wouldn’t let.... He made her choose. What the hell – what the hell is wrong with someone, that they could take this – person that they say they care about, and make her choose to be – with the man she loves, or with her own son? That’s so fucked up, you know? That’s the.... I’m pissed at my father for a lot of reasons, but that’s the one I don’t think I can ever get past. I don’t even know if I want to. Someone should...remember what he did to her. There should be some kind of accountability.”

“The dead are beyond pain, John,” she said. “I think perhaps you hold on to your anger not for your mother’s honor, but for the hurt his actions caused you.”

Perhaps. Didn’t matter, though. His father had been out of his life for a long time, too, and left behind nothing but mess to clean up. If the dead were beyond pain, they were beyond needing John to think about them fairly, too. “I should have had four years,” he said. “It’s not a lot of time, but it’s four years, and I’d give.... I just feel like they’re owed to me. And I can’t have them.”

“We have the present,” Teyla said. “You have tonight.”

 _Not enough_ , he wanted to say. _It doesn’t make up for what’s been taken from me, time I’ll never have back._ Whoever he loves now – he’s done his best for them – not done right by them, maybe, but done his best.

Tonight didn’t belong to him, anyway.

*

After he left Teyla’s, John went by the control annex and called the roll for Rodney – not that he was trying to check up on them. He just knew that Rodney liked to have it done, if at all possible.

He didn’t do it to check up on them, but he was relieved to see their names together anyway, two anonymous heat signatures in the center of the room that weren’t anonymous to John at all. John logged into the master personnel database and changed Ronon’s name, so that it came up _Ronon Dex, –_ underneath _McKay, Rodney_ , and it made him satisfied to see everything in the right place, as close to corrected as he could make it.

Two red blips on a translucent read-out, glowing in perfect silence with their own banked fire. The computer ticked them off with bloodless efficiency, adding them to the list of people who were here, who belonged in Atlantis, who hadn’t gone anywhere tonight.

John’s name came up a minute later – alone in the annex, but not on this hall, this wing, this level, this city. Surrounded by red life-warmth, familiar names, sketches of this place that he knew better than any base or any city he’d ever lived in before. Add him to the list, move down a level, go on.

Stay or go, he thought, and everything around him hummed _stay_ , and John knew it had never really been a question at all. There was nothing here that he was willing to let go of – not yet. He wasn’t that kind of man.


	8. Romance

Rodney McKay’s worst date ever was the awards banquet for the Higginbotham Prize, which he attended in the company of the incomparable Amy Nields, whose contempt for the theoretical side of physics had made her irresistibly attractive to every doctoral candidate Rodney knew. She turned him down nine times for a date over three months (normally one episode of utter humiliation would have sufficed, but she was _Amy Nields_ , blonde and brilliant and charming and cruel, and he would have stuck his hand in a reactor core if he’d thought it would get him anywhere with her – but no, if it had been that easy to impress her, it wouldn’t have been worth half as much), and when she finally agreed it was quite blatantly the award and the chance to meet other, more important scientists as the guest of honor’s date that appealed. Rodney didn’t mind; it was the first foot in the door he’d ever had or ever would have. He would have paid _cash_ by that point; a little social bribery was absolutely nothing to him.

He’d gotten a haircut and been fitted for his first tuxedo. She wore white – he could never remember what, exactly; he forever afterward remembered her as this shining, formless creation of light and celestial perfection, golden hair curling against her pale neck. She took his arm on their entrance and he pulled her chair out for her, and in a way it was winning the Higginbotham Prize all over again. He felt positive that people were looking at him in an entirely new light; he felt that he was finally embarking on the great career and the grand life that had, until that evening, seemed perpetually just around the corner for him, palpable but never quite solid in his hand.

But then hard fate intervened, in the form of candles, and a calla lily centerpiece (as elegant and shining-white and time-sensitive as Amy herself), and the unfortunately touchy sprinkler system at the Harvard Club. He got the wine on her dress, the candles in the flowers, and soggy reality all over his rarefied existence of achievement and respect. Amy’s dress was ruined, the club had to be evacuated, and Rodney never got laid in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ever again. He had never believed that was a coincidence.

_“What was your worst date ever?” he asked._

_“I guess this one,” Ronon said. His hands didn’t shake when he refilled Rodney’s wineglass, and the flames that tipped the candles didn’t even waver as he reached around them._

_“No, no, no, no, no,” Rodney said. “This is not a bad date. This is an_ awkward _date. This is uncomfortable, nerve-wracking, anxiety-inducing, and undeniably strange. But a bad date involves – recriminations, tears, arrest, and definitely no chance whatsoever of getting lucky. On my worst date, I almost burned down the Harvard Club. Although in my defense, there were twelve people at my table, and if just_ one _of them had been drinking anything that wasn’t forty-proof, we could have gotten it put out a lot faster. Academia – if you knew, you’d understand why we drink.”_

_“So you’re saying I still have a chance to get lucky.”_

_“Sure, that slang you know,” Rodney grumbled._

_“It’s also my best date ever,” he said stiffly, turning his spoon over and over in the French onion soup. “It’s pretty much my first.”_

_“Oh,” Rodney said, and then for once, he wasn’t sure what to add. “They’re not all like this,” he offered._

_“I didn’t figure they were.”_

There are twenty characters in the Satedan alphabet, and letters are grouped by syllable. A three-letter syllable is written in a triangle – top, then bottom left, then bottom right for a leading syllable, and an ending syllable sits beneath it, upside-down like a reflection – top right, top left, third letter at the bottom, so that a six-letter word forms a complete diamond. Six is the perfect number, the number of completion.

Some syllables have only two letters. They are written with the second letter nested inside the first, a bonded glyph that replaces a triad of letters. Ronon’s family name was the first word he learned to write, O contained inside the R, both resting on the flat surface of the N-O-N triad. His eye can pick the symbol out at a hundred paces, its shape both unique and familiar.

Sateda is a heavenly word – six letters, written as a single triangle made of three nested-pair syllables. This reflects the universe, which is also given expression through three bonded pairs – parent and child, body and soul, and the Great Dyad, which is something and nothing, being and nonbeing, 1 and 0. On Sateda, binary programming was once a sacred art, practiced only in monasteries under the guidance of the enlightened. It was considered too dangerous for the unwise to deal in the most profound mystery of the universe, to speak the language of all things. By Ronon’s own era, this was considered superstition.

Ronon can read in English now, although he prefers not to. Atlantean script looks disorganized to him, letters dropped end-to-end like clothing left on the floor to form a trail between the front door and the shower. It has no structure, no guiding shape, and he finds it slow labor to add sound to sound to sound in endless dull ranks.

He has experimented with grouping Atlantean letters into Satedan forms; in some cases, the experiment is more successful than others. Rodney’s name looks very satisfying: R-O-D over N-E-Y, and the shape of McKay is near enough to the shape of Ronon to please him, in his more sentimental moods. Sheppard’s is highly troublesome, but he can do it if he erases the silent H in John’s given name and substitutes the leading sound of his family name with the single letter which makes an identical sound in Satedan, yielding SH-E-P over A-R-D. It looks okay to his eye. Teyla works, but you have to cheat to get her family name, collapsing the first two syllables into one triad, E-M-A. Weir’s name is a mess; he can’t resolve it no matter how hard he tries, which somehow doesn’t surprise him. Atlantis feels like a heavenly word for some reason, but it isn’t quite. Canada is, but he can’t reconcile Earth or California into any Satedan shape at all; USA is convenient to write, but Ronon still finds the concept of acronyms alien and somewhat disquieting. How can you represent the whole of a thing through only some of its parts? It feels disrespectful. He feels the same way, though somewhat less strongly, about abbreviations; when he writes out Rodney’s name, he always spells out his full title, D-O-C over T-O-R. Everything about Rodney’s name is aesthetic and reminds Ronon of home.

_Rodney spent a lot of time reading the note – a lot more than it seemed like he should’ve needed to, based on the single line of writing across it. He even turned it over twice to check the back; Ronon could have told him it was blank._

_“What?” Ronon said again. “What does it say?” He couldn’t get a good enough look to recognize anything but an isolated letter here and there in Sheppard’s dark, cramped handwriting._

_“It says...” Rodney folded the paper in quarters and shoved it under the ice bucket on the table. “Never mind. I’m not sure I can work out a literal translation into English from the language of emotionally crippled, Hollywood-addled, thinks-he’s-cool-but-really-is-still-stuck-in-the-eighties stoner morons, but the upshot is that...this is for us.”_

_“Yeah,” Ronon said. “I figured that part out. So...you want to eat it?”_

_“Well, I hate to see it go to waste,” Rodney said, giving the food a wistful look. It seemed to be yet another variation on that species of poultry that the Atlanteans favored, with a cheese-garnished soup and a fresh keedra-berry tart with whipped cream. Before coming to Atlantis, it had never once occurred to Ronon that keedra-berry anything could be improved in any way, but whipped cream was nothing short of miraculous. It came on most desserts here – all of them, if you asked the cafeteria staff. “Dinner won’t kill us, right?” he added hopefully._

_“Doubt that’ll be how we go,” Ronon agreed, and reached for the wine in the ice while trying to ignore the note he knew was hidden beneath it._

When you enlist into the Grand Infantry, you take a twelve-year assignment. Hard service, they call it. Four out of five soldiers don’t live to count twelve full years.

At the end of twelve years, the survivors split pretty much in half. One group leaves the Infantry altogether; they marry, acquire property, have children – all the things they have been forbidden to do for so long, they immerse themselves in gratefully. The rest re-enlist; they serve the remainder of their careers as petty officers, trainers, home guard – safer, more settled assignments. Life service, it’s called. Soldiers in life service have a civilian’s rights; they can own land and slaves, start families, vote and run for office. If they are killed, the Infantry pays to have their bodies returned to their families for burial, rather than interring them in the closest military graveyard.

The first thing Ronon realized about Atlantean soldiers was that they were all in life service. Once he made that connection, almost everything else began to make sense: the way they courted, the way they went back for each other under fire, they way they mourned. Every single Atlantean, the soldiers just as much as the rest of them, were citizens. Every one of them was expected to have a future, and if they didn’t, it was a kind of small-scale tragedy for those who had known them in life, a violation of what they saw as the natural order.

To Ronon’s mind, dying in hard service _was_ the natural order. He had not grieved for anyone since his father in the way that Atlanteans grieved.

Motivated at first by curiosity, he tried to view the world as Atlanteans did – everything so stuffed with potential, with hope, and so vulnerable to disaster. He began to understand why they always had so much to talk about, and why they made everything complicated. Before very long, he began to understand more than he wanted to: how they could still be unwilling to believe that Aiden Ford was gone for good, why they fought with people they really liked, why they craved extreme sensations, why basic tactical decisions could become so muddled and confusing for them as they endlessly weighed out tangible and intangible costs. Atlantean lives were jagged lines, highs and lows with no clear directionality, never leading simply to death or to victory, but to some vaguely understood future where they would, no doubt, continue to struggle with those distinctively Atlantean dilemmas: am I happy, do I have a purpose and have I completed it, who am I?

He was closer to becoming one of them already than he would like to admit.

Ronon himself was in life service now, and not only by Atlantean standards. He’d passed his twelve-mark on a frozen planet, rags wrapped around his hands to keep them from shaking as he braced his gun on an outcropping of rock and picked off wild dogs one by one to steal the corpse of an animal he’d never seen or heard of before. There was no ritual of thanksgiving, no party, no officer’s commission, but he was alive – a scavenger now, not a soldier, but _alive_. 

Life as a civilian, he wouldn’t have known what to do with it even if it had been an option. When he enlisted with Atlantis, he knew what he was choosing: life service, the middle way between war and peace, Infantry and family, service and.... Whatever ordinary people had instead. 

_”Don’t make me laugh,” Rodney said, rolling his eyes and not looking like he was about to laugh at all. “Everybody remembers their first.”_

_Ronon shrugged. “I don’t know. She was.... I don’t know. She was a woman. It was a long time ago. I remember Kell paid for her.”_

_“Stop, stop, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to hear the story.”_

_“Okay.”_

_Rodney attacked his poultry with more vigor than necessary for a moment, and then said in a tired voice, as though asking were a distasteful chore that he couldn’t get out of, “I don’t suppose you remember the first time it was_ free _, do you?”_

_“Sure,” he said. “It was after I’d been tending Kell for a few months, and we just got...I don’t know. Carried away. I was scared he’d be mad at me, but he...wasn’t.”_

_“Well, that was predictable.”_

_“You asked.”_

_“Just once, I’d like to hear a story about your love life that didn’t involve one of your commanding officers.”_

_“I’ve got brothel stories, but you don’t seem to like those, either.”_

_“I suppose I’m just_ difficult _that way.”_

_“I don’t know what to tell you. That’s pretty much what I’ve got.”_

Dex is an easy lay; everybody in Atlantis knows this by now. Rodney doesn’t _try_ to keep up with his sexual adventures, but physicists gossip like little old women, and engineers are worse.

Rodney is jealous, or so he tries to tell himself. Because being jealous is normal; something that he alone used to have now belongs to anyone who whistles for it, and that makes it cheaper than it should be, and he misses it and resents what people like Maddy Norris and Cadman and that punk kid in astrometrics have done to something that used to be practically perfect. You _should_ be jealous. It’s normal, it’s the quintessence of normal; the fact that John Sheppard doesn’t grasp it is practically _proof_ that it’s a basic human emotion.

He should be jealous, and some days he is.

Other days, he watches Ronon Dex prowl through Atlantis, leonine and inscrutable and so comfortable in his skin, and what’s normal begins to seem all twisted around. He’s like a natural phenomenon of some kind, like an electrical storm of sex and strength, like a kind of magnetic north that exists on every planet without fail, and it hardly even enters Rodney’s mind that someone like that could be reserved for any one person’s enjoyment. It’s like he generates an EMP that shorts out Rodney’s sense of normal altogether.

Because it isn’t exactly normal– Well, none of it is, is it? Nobody like Dex has ever even made a pass at Rodney before, let alone _pined_ after him; that’s not normal. And maybe wanting to have your cake and eat it too (a phrase that never made sense to Rodney – who would care about _having_ cake at all, if it weren’t for the _eating_ of it?) is normal, but what Rodney wants from the two utterly different men in his life goes a long way past that. And it’s probably not normal that even though he knows intellectually that it’s the easiest thing in the world to get somewhere with Dex, it doesn’t feel as cheap as it should.

With every piece of Dex that he touches or tastes, every inch of skin that Rodney sees bared only when they’re alone together, with every intense frown of concentration or unconscious sigh of approval, every twitch of his fingers while he’s trying to hold Rodney steady and sure – with every veiled glance and roughened inclination of his voice and uncertain bend of his head, with everything about him, Rodney only feels more convinced than ever that he’s taking home the prize, that everything he’s learned he shouldn’t bother wanting has been placed directly in his hands, free of charge because it’s well beyond price.

Dex is phenomenal. Nothing cheapens him; Rodney can’t imagine putting a value on this that is more or less than what it is right now. Maybe he’s jealous of all the others and maybe he’s not, but that’s all theory, and it’s only when they’re apart.

They’ve been apart for a while now, but it falls away quickly when they touch. For once, it’s not a competition for top honors or the world’s regard or the right to say he’s done what no one else could ever do. Dex kisses him and slides his hand over the small of his back and murmurs, “Okay, yes. Yes,” against his face, and all the world’s equations are solved, all the mysteries unraveled and the universe revealed to be clear and orderly and beautiful, and something inside Rodney that has been churning and calculating and processing for as long as he can remember goes suddenly quiet, satisfied at last.

This is his zero-point. All the Ancients could do, all anyone could ever do, was synthesize a partial replica of this feeling, perfect symmetry and limitless power.

_”Do you think our relationship is based on sex?”_

_“Why, do you want it to be?” Dex asked, in that strange way he had of making what should be a rhetorical question sound actively interesting and full of possibility._

_He couldn’t get his fingers on the buckles around Dex’s wrist, because he kept pulling his arm loose, running his fingers over Rodney’s palm. “Stop,” he said through gritted teeth, and he finally had to give up and let Dex lace their fingers together. He reached across to work at the bracer with his left hand instead, but he’s not left-handed, and the little buckles were tighter and the leather stiffer than he expected. “Get this – a little help, please?”_

_Dex shifted, a seismic movement of skin and bone and hot erection underneath Rodney’s body. “No,” he said, a little indignantly. “Forget it, just – touch me, I want to feel you.”_

_“See, this is why people think all we have is sex. Great sex,” he added. He didn’t mean it to be an insult._

_“What people?”_

_“I don’t know,_ people _.” Rodney actually had no idea what people thought about the two of them, but he was probably right. There were certainly no secrets in Atlantis, and what would they imagine that he saw in Dex, after all, except what everyone else saw? They had no shared interests, no compatible habits, no common ground. God knew what they thought Dex saw in him, for that matter, but it was hardly the first time Rodney had been forced to contend with naysayers and their spiteful, half-audible murmurs behind his back; he had gone to_ graduate _school, after all. He didn’t let the petty jealousy of lesser minds bother him in professional arenas, and the petty jealousy of people who thought that if they were Dex, they wouldn’t settle for Rodney, well, that was even more small-minded and contemptible. That was beneath his notice, but somehow he was finding himself still vulnerable in unexpected places. It chafed at him to suspect that his desire for Dex was being reduced in the eyes of grubby, unimaginative onlookers to something that wasn’t elemental, but merely elementary._

_The bracer came off Dex’s arm at last, and Rodney bent his hand back and trailed his mouth up and down the fine skin inside his wrist, hot and damp with sweat. Just skin – Dex had acres of it – but valuable because it had to be uncovered. Discovered._

_With his other hand, Dex traced undecipherable shapes on Rodney’s back as Rodney mouthed his way down his arm to the crook of his elbow where his pulse drummed quick and erratic. “If sex feels like this,” he said, low in his throat, “I’ve been doing it all wrong up til now.”_

_Rodney turned his face against the well of Dex’s broad palm and snorted a laugh, letting Dex’s fingers sway against his cheek like wind-blown leaves._

Rodney’s father drove a bus – when he lived with his wife and children, at any rate. Rodney had no idea what line of work he’d taken up after he abandoned them, which happened when Rodney was twelve.

From time to time, when his mother had stopped going to work again and the money was drying up rapidly, whatever fat old neighbor or semi-comatose teenage bimbo was being paid to watch Rodney and Jeannie would be laid off, and Bruce McKay would bring his children with him on the route. They sat at the back of the bus, Jeannie with her coloring book, swinging her feet so that the heels of her Mary Janes banged hypnotically, obnoxiously against the plastic beneath their seats, Rodney with his Garfield backpack (well, it was a funny strip in 1978) stuffed full of library books on earthquakes and nuclear power and the hotels they would be building before long on the surface of the moon. Whenever Jeannie began to complain, Rodney was responsible for stuffing graham crackers with pink frosting on them into her mouth. To this day, that’s as much as Rodney knows about child-rearing: it’s a myth that sugar makes children hyperactive. It is, in fact, a sudden change in blood sugar levels that makes children hyperactive, so shutting them up with sugar is fine, as long as you have enough sugar to do it _consistently_.

In the winter of 1978, Rodney was ten years old, and nobody had yet suggested that he didn’t have to march lockstep through the public school system with the morons in his age-group, so he was in grade five. Things would change after the A-bomb incident in grade six, but until then, he suffered – well, not in silence, but it might as well have been, for as much attention as anyone paid to his pain. That was the winter he fell in love for the first time.

Her name was Jennifer Reynolds, and she took the bus from her apartment complex to the rink where she had ice skating lessons three times a week. She was a junior in high school, redheaded, and she wore a heart-shaped locket on the outside of her red parka and carried her schoolbooks in one arm, her skates with the laces tied together thrown over the other. She knew who Rodney was; she usually sat a row in front of him, and said hello when she got on the bus and waved goodbye with her fuzzy mittens when she got off. Sometimes she asked him what he was reading, and once she asked him if he’d seen _Star Wars_ yet (he had, of course – six times, because it was the only movie both he and Jeannie liked to see, so they got dropped off there a lot the previous summer), because she knew he liked spaceships and things. “I think I want to build spaceships when I get older,” he told her, trying to sound casual about it, like it was maybe just one option he was tossing around. “I think I might want to design the first real hyperspace drive.”

“Cool,” Jennifer said. She had a dimpled chin and long bangs and big brown eyes and Rodney was in love with her, totally and completely.

He never told anyone, of course, because he knew that was the sort of thing adults just lived to mock, and he didn’t really have any non-adult friends. He knew how it sounded, and he knew it was a doomed love, that she didn’t feel that way about him, that he barely even knew her. He knew all of that perfectly well, but there was still something – something special between them, some kind of immediate and perfect connection that Rodney knew was eternal and unassailable.

The reason it was love, and not just some ridiculous boyhood infatuation (Rodney had thought about this a lot over the ensuing quarter-century, and he’d perfected his theory on the matter), was that he didn’t want anything from her. Yes, it was nice that she spoke to him sometimes, and waved at him (Rodney still had an unfortunately excitable response to fuzzy mittens), and shared her butterscotches with him sometimes, but ultimately he didn’t need any of that. And yes, fine, he thought she was beautiful, and a few years later when he discovered masturbation in earnest, she was on his permanent rotation along with Nurse Chapel and Loni Anderson (who was also named Jennifer on television, indisputable proof of...something), but that wasn’t the point, either.

The point was that Jennifer Reynolds’s mere existence made him feel differently about the universe than he had before he discovered her; she changed everything. She made him grateful that there _was_ a universe, and when he thought about her, all he thought about was _her_. He didn’t think of himself at all, and Rodney had spent so much time worrying about taking care of himself that that was virtually unprecedented. He loved her because every time the bus doors hissed open at the Riverbend Apartments stop and Jennifer climbed on board, all he felt was lucky that his babysitter got fired and he was watching his little sister on this exact bus, her exact route. It was like a million minor disasters and freaks of nature had conspired to bring him here, where he could sit one row behind her and grip the corners of his book to keep his hands from shaking. It was enough; he was as happy that winter, on the afternoons when Jennifer Reynolds had skating practice, as he ever had been in his whole life.

If that’s not love, what could you possibly call it?

And it did last forever, too, or close enough. He’d tried to track her down, in between Siberia and Antarctica, because some colossal failure of a US government-sponsored amateur travel agent thought it would be a good idea to book him for a weekend in Calgary, when all he wanted to do was get on to his new job. But he was stuck there, presumably because somebody thought it was his home and he might have missed it. He hadn’t missed it, not even infinitesimal amounts. He thought about visiting Jeannie, but he’d blown off their mother’s funeral for work just a few years before that, whereupon he stopped getting Christmas cards from his sister; he didn’t know if she even still lived in Calgary, and at any rate getting stricken from the Christmas card list was as clear a sign as Rodney could imagine that she didn’t want anything more to do with him, short of dead animal parts delivered to his home. He was a little sorry about the whole thing, except not really, because funerals existed to comfort the bereaved, and Rodney was the bereaved and he felt better not being there, so he didn’t see what right Jeannie had to judge him. Anyway, a little sorry, but not sorry enough to apologize, and he really didn’t think _he_ was the one who was being petty about it.

But he had two days to kill, and so he’d done a little research, thinking maybe Jennifer still lived in town somewhere. She might remember him, at least well enough that she wouldn’t mind a phone call and maybe a battery of his more bizarre Russia stories (not the classified ones, naturally, but it was Russia; there was a lot of room left over for bizarre) over dinner. He couldn’t track her down, however, which was maybe not surprising. Twenty years later, Rodney had yet to find out what became of his own father, let alone a redheaded figure skater who used to ride his father’s bus.

He had a drink in the hotel lobby instead, and surprised himself by how much of a letdown it was. Maybe it was the scotch, but on the other hand, maybe they had shared something, just like Rodney remembered it. Maybe if they met again as adults, the situation would have been different; maybe she’d still have that gold locket and the ability to change his life with one smile, and maybe he wouldn’t screw it up like he had every other relationship in his life, because what was the point in believing (even temporarily and only after a few drinks) in destiny if destiny couldn’t give you a bit of a hand at the pivotal moments?

The strange fact was that in 2003, Rodney was still as in love with Jennifer as he ever had been. It would have been a comfort to see her, before setting out for no telling what, a level of new discovery that was bound to upend his whole concept of reality forever. She didn’t have to do anything – just take his call, eat dinner with him, maybe. He’d never really asked her to do anything except...to be real. That was the difference between Jennifer and all the other women he’d loved since her – loved conditionally, loved possessively, loved in frustration or been bound to in one or another kind of hopelessly fraught relationship. That was what made her still the best, twenty-five years later.

Ironically, about two and a half weeks after the night he didn’t take Jennifer Reynolds out to dinner, a complete stranger in military BDUs and the red-faced, breathless look of someone coming in from outside the facility walked right into his office and said, “McKay, you’re in charge around here?” in an accent that hailed from God knew what dusty episode of Wagon Train, and Rodney looked up to tell him _yes, which is why I have many layers of subordinates who should be screening my distractions for me_ , and for the first time since he was ten years old, he fell in love, totally and completely.

He blathered his way through a four-minute conversation about what the scientists were and were not allowed to transport as carry-on luggage in a helicopter and what had to be shipped in specially marked crates for laboratory materials, during which he was busily working on resolving an unexpected sexual identity crisis. Four minutes later, the pilot nodded his head sideways with exaggerated courtesy and said, “Fine, then. I think the rest of our working relationship should be smooth sailing,” and the crisis was over, and it took every ounce of Rodney’s self-control not to start grinning like a lobotomy victim, because the only thoughts in his head were unexpectedly jubilant – _this changes everything_ , and _this is enough_.

It would have been enough, too. John was handsome and bright, a good listener who could also be counted on to shut Rodney up when his conversation became too compulsive and fragmentary, with a skewed sense of humor and an ability to lend perspective to a world that often, to Rodney, felt unbearable in its extremities. He was a brave man and a good one, and even though Rodney added him immediately to his masturbatory rotation along with Samantha and Scully and Britney Spears, he didn’t _really_ want anything from John. He just felt lucky that he – that all of them had discovered John in time to bring him along to Atlantis.

From a self-involved child, Rodney knew he’d grown into a self-involved man, but Major Sheppard made him care about something else with as much strength as Rodney had (more, in fact, than he’d known he had), which was good practice for all the self-sacrificing Rodney was called upon to do lately.

_”What’s a rook?”_

_“It’s a chess piece.”_

_“No, I know, but what does it mean? Why is it called that?”_

_“I don’t know, I never– Why do you care? You don’t play chess.”_

_Dex shrugged, busy compressing the bulb of whipped cream on his tart into a flat layer, smoothing it evenly across the pastry with the tip of his spoon. “I’m learning. I asked Hollister why he plays it every day, because it looks...not very exciting. But he said you can play it for speed, too, and that sounded okay – more like real tactics, you know, where you have to make complicated decisions really fast and you can’t just sit there for an hour and think about what might happen later. So he’s teaching me. He doesn’t know what a rook is, either. He said it was a kind of bird, but the piece doesn’t look like a bird.”_

_“Chess is obsolete,” Rodney said glumly. “Ever since Deep Blue, I don’t see the point. My philosophy is, if a computer can do something better than a person can, let the computer do it, stay out of its way. Are you sleeping with Hollister now?”_

_He smiled a little bit and said, “He’s pretty old for me.”_

_“You like older men.”_

_“True. But he’s just teaching me chess.”_

_“I once joined a Pee-Wee hockey league just because a redhead named Jennifer Reynolds took skating lessons at the same rink.”_

_“Did it work?”_

_“She was too old for me. How old are you, anyway?”_

_He seemed to think it over, drawing his eyebrows together in intense concentration. Rodney hadn’t really intended it to be a trick question. “Twenty-seven,” he finally said. “Give or take.”_

_“1978,” Rodney sighed. “Of course.”_

**Ten Things Rodney McKay Wanted for Quite Some Time Before He Actually Got Them:**

**1\. A date with Amy Nields**

cf. the Higginbotham Prize and the Harvard Club, above.

**2\. An apology from SGC**

It wasn’t an apology per se, or not in so many words, but it got him out of Siberia anyhow, and he knew it was because he was much too valuable to be buried there forever over a thing that wasn’t, in fact, his fault at all. All of that, Rodney feels, is implicit in the fact that they called him, and not at all the other way around.

**3\. To suck someone’s cock**

He wanted this long before it occurred to him that he wasn’t strictly heterosexual – and yes, in _retrospect_ , of course that seems a little improbable, but at the time it made a certain amount of sense. Rodney loves women precisely because they _aren’t_ men; they are more gracious, more forgiving, wiser and more patient than any man Rodney has ever met. Rodney has dated ten women in his life, nine of whom have had sex with him and six of whom have put his cock in their mouths, and it used to amaze him as he watched them do it. They made it look so easy; he didn’t even know where to put his _hands_ while he was getting a blowjob, but they knew where to put _everything_.

It was just habit to make the jump from wondering how something was done to wanting to work it out himself.

John loves the way Rodney sucks his cock. “You’ve done this before,” he said, smiling his sex-drunk, delighted smile down at Rodney the first time, and Rodney said, “None of your business.”

Rodney McKay is a man of many, many accomplishments, and he would not by any means say that a certain natural flair for cocksucking is the one he’s proudest of. But it’s on the list.

**4\. A really good backrub**

Bridget Waverly, a librarian at Northwestern; they dated for six months in 1993, a particularly busy time in Rodney’s life even by his own standards. She had what Rodney thought might actually qualify as an addiction to 24-hour news channels, however, so she amused herself most of the time. Looking back, he can’t remember what, if anything, they ever talked about, but she was always awake whenever he stopped by her apartment, day or night, and he remembered falling asleep beside her, lulled by the dispassionate lilt of the anchors’ voices (he wonders now if John was in any of those places they were talking about, if Rodney was falling asleep thinking about wormholes and listening to the story of John’s life on CNN) and her fingers absently stroking his hair. She made breakfast for him, too, and he toyed with the possibility that he was in love with her, but that never really got off the ground.

He has no idea where she learned to give backrubs like that, but she should have been given an honorary medical degree; she was certainly of more use to him than most doctors Rodney had gone to see in his life. It felt like she could curl her fingers underneath his shoulderbones and get directly at the muscles beneath, like she could actually sink inside his skin and find things that Rodney didn’t even know were in pain until the pain suddenly stopped.

He stopped having time to see her sometime around Thanksgiving, and a couple of months later when he went back to her place, she wouldn’t open the door for him anymore, even though he could hear the television inside. He missed her, and not only because of the backrubs, although he’s never found a masseuse, professional or otherwise, since Bridget that quite lived up to her.

**5\. A threesome**

It didn’t happen exactly like he imagined it, of course. It wasn’t him and two Swedish stewardesses, or version 2.0, him and John and a Swedish stewardess.

Rodney doesn’t think about it that much. He considers himself in the prime of life, and it just doesn’t provide the right impetus for surviving insane odds if he starts believing that his best days are behind him.

It wasn’t the best night of his life – just the best night of his life _so far_. That’s a critical distinction. Rodney tries to bear that in mind as much as possible, but mostly, he tries not to think about it that much.

**6\. To fall asleep and wake up next to John**

The first time doesn’t count, because he didn’t so much fall asleep as pass out. The field doesn’t count, although technically they’ve bedded down _next to_ each other plenty of times in that context.

John snores unevenly, quiet raspy breathing punctuated with a sudden flurry of muffled snorts that sounds for all the world as though he’s waking up. But he isn’t. When he does wake up, he does so all at once, zero to sixty like the incredible, finely calibrated machine that he is.

“Where are you going?” John said (it was the ninth time they’d had sex – Rodney kept count up to twenty-four, and then stopped counting on purpose because he was beginning to make _himself_ feel creepy), and put his hand on Rodney’s leg and tugged impatiently while Rodney was trying to climb out of bed. He kissed Rodney’s shoulderblades and put one arm over him, his hand burrowing between the bed and Rodney’s chest. “There,” he mumbled sleepily into Rodney’s neck. “Now go to sleep.”

Maybe that night doesn’t fit the specifications either, because Rodney isn’t convinced that he slept. But John did, lazing up against his back and snoring against his skin, and when he woke up in the morning he propped himself up and ran an affectionate hand down Rodney’s thigh and said, “Hey, you up?” as if everything were normal and everything were in its proper place, and that’s the night that Rodney counts.

**7\. A cat**

Rodney grew up believing that he was allergic to cats and dogs. Turns out, it was actually his mother who was allergic, or possibly nobody at all.

The Humane Society was giving kittens away at the grocery store, and one was a beautiful tortoiseshell who wouldn’t romp around playfully for the benefit of the children who were trying to choose the most adorable one. He just laid there on his side, bigger than most of the others but implying bad health with his lethargy. Rodney picked him up, and he was twice as heavy as he looked and dangled from Rodney’s hands with nothing more than a brief meow of protest at being removed from his warm spot at the bottom of the cardboard kitten playpen.

He had to go back inside the store to buy a litter box and cat food, and two bouncy balls with feather tails on them, and by the time he and the kitten made it home, all Rodney’s frozen dinners had thawed.

Rodney took him to three separate vets, just in case, but he seemed to be in perfect health, which briefly made Rodney feel bitter; he’d only committed to the damn thing because he felt sorry for it, probably terminally ill and ignored by all the selfish children in favor of cats who would live and thrive. He’d planned to make it comfortable in its last days, not to _buy a cat_.

He’d always wanted a pet, but he didn’t think of himself as the kind of person who could take care of anything. It was enough work to take care of himself most of the time. But Schroeder wasn’t a finicky eater, and he slept sixteen hours a day, and he was always sitting on the piano when Rodney came home, his little face perfectly composed but his tail lashing back and forth, and then he would walk across the piano and put out one paw and tap Rodney’s chest with it until Rodney picked him up and carried him into the kitchen. He always seemed to be in an amenable mood, but he purred extra loudly when Rodney talked about his day, as if the sound of Rodney’s voice made him happy.

**8\. John Sheppard begging him for sexual favors**

After the last time, Rodney had promised himself that he wouldn’t let John fuck him anymore. It was too – too out of control, and he couldn’t afford it while he was trying to master the rules of John’s game. Maybe he couldn’t ever afford it.

“Come on, Rodney,” John said, dragging all three words out one by one, sliding his nails down Rodney’s back from behind. “I’m really fucking bored.”

“Yes, flattery. That’s the strategy I’d stick with, if I were you.” Three weeks on the Daedalus _was_ undeniably boring, even with a brief life-threatening interlude, but honestly, that was John’s come-on line? He was obviously starting to take Rodney for granted, which brought up an odd combination of mixed feelings.

“You love it,” John said, pressing his mouth just behind Rodney’s ear. “Don’t act like it doesn’t make you come.”

That was when it occurred to Rodney – _he_ was Amy Nields in this scenario. He had something that John wanted and didn’t know how to get, which made him the valuable one. Rodney had never played hard to get before, but he’d been on the other end often enough to know how it was done.

“A lot of things make me come,” Rodney said. “It’s really not the achievement you think it is.”

Rodney scheduled himself four days, long enough to get a solid sense of what John would do with rejection. He made it through almost two.

John is incredible when he begs, all prickly frustration and velvety charm. “Rodney,” he purrs, his mouth on Rodney’s neck, his lips, his hands sliding under Rodney’s ass. “It’ll be so good, it’s so good with you.” Or he says, “This is all I can think about lately, you’re so, so hot,” or “Come on, Rodney, come on, say yes, we both want it, what’s stopping you? Just say yes.”

He thinks by now John’s onto him, and he only keeps up the game because it turns them both on, but it was real enough on the Daedalus – John’s need, the rush of power, the rug burn (who put carpeting in an Asgard warship? Do they even have carpeting on Asgard, or was it USAF procedure, or did the Asgard think it was only neighborly to give it that touch of Earth before presenting it to the Earthlings?), the hours and hours of slow, spiderweb flirting in the galley and scorched-earth making out on the floor of John’s passenger berth. “You’re so pathetic,” Rodney gloated between kisses. “You can’t stand not getting your own way in bed, can you?”

“What can I say? I know what I like.”

“You should try the crew; there are dozens of people on this ship you haven’t had adequate opportunity to smarm your way up to yet. Surely at least one of them will give _Lieutenant Colonel_ John Sheppard’s magical dick the respect you’re so sure it deserves.”

“Okay, don’t call me that when we’re naked if you want this to last,” he growled, licking up Rodney’s throat as he fingered his own nipple roughly. “Nobody on this ship has what I want.”

“How do– “

“I want you, I want you, Rodney, just you,” he said, and the next thing Rodney knew he was on his hands and knees and vaguely wondering just who was playing whom, here, and then it didn’t matter.

They switch off more often now than they used to, but Rodney tries to bear Nields’s Law in mind: the more he acts like he’s doing John a favor, the more John will work to win him over, and he is _incredible_ when he’s breathing praise and desperation over every inch of Rodney’s body.

**9\. Sex**

He was twenty-two years old. He had his first _doctorate_ before he lost his virginity, but Rodney isn’t bitter about that anymore. He prefers quality to quantity.

**10\. To go into space**

Before he knew enough to want anything else, there was this. There was always this.

_“You gonna take your clothes off?” Dex said, after he got restless with being stared at. Usually Rodney didn’t mind Dex’s chronic lack of patience, except in the field, and occasionally when Rodney was trying to memorize every inch of his naked body._

_“I suppose that would be for the best.” Rodney traced his hands down both sides of Dex’s body, just for fun, as he crawled back off the foot of the bed to strip as fast as he could and climb back up. He touched his palms against Dex’s thighs as he crawled up, headed for his mouth._

_His dick noticed even before his brain did that Dex’s legs shifted apart when he touched them, but it didn’t take his brain long to follow behind. He tried another experiment, running his hands again over Dex’s long legs and letting his thumbs slide further between them, stroking the softer skin there. Dex’s breath jumped slightly in his chest, and Rodney watched his legs tremble – trying to decide what to do with them, or trying to resist? Rodney did his best to skew the results of his experiment by leaning down and mouthing the inside of his thigh, and God, there was some kind of miracle of geometry, a Golden Mean, in the way Dex’s legs were coming apart, slowly and gracefully like an infinite unfolding series under Rodney’s tongue._

_Dex’s hand came down between his shoulders, rubbing roughly. “You – you want – ?”_

_“Oh, I’m positive I want,” Rodney said, though the words might have been hard to make out, between the licking and the nibbling. Whatever hesitation Dex might have started out with, he got over fast enough when Rodney worked his way up to tongue his balls. “The question is,” Rodney added, lifting up his head and wrapping his hand around Dex’s cock with a squeeze just hard enough to make his breath hiss out harshly, “what do you want?”_

_“You want me...you want me to ask you for it?”_

_Honestly curious, Rodney asked, “Would that be difficult for you to do?”_

_Dex shook his head slowly. “I’ll ask you whatever you want me to.”_

_Rodney frowned slightly. “I’m not sure you’ve quite got the hang of this asking-me-to-fuck-you business. You’re supposed to sound less accommodating and more desperate.”_

_“It’s been a long time for me,” he said. “Can you...go slow?”_

Sateda has a great body of philosophy, but a very minor literary canon, at least in the eyes of its neighbors. There is the Vanorayax, the ancient epic of war and prophecy for which Sateda is most famous, and there is the story of Davon and Leyma.

Ronon cannot remember the first time he heard the story; he would be surprised if any Satedan could. He saw the opera at the age of ten, on a trip with his oldest brother into Tijur City, and he remembers that vividly. He can’t sing, but sometimes the melodies still get stuck in his head; he doesn’t know what to do with them, any more than he knows what to do with any of his ghosts.

Davon is a soldier, and Leyma the daughter of a payroll agent – payroll agents being typical villains in story and in life for an Infantryman. They court in secret, and she swears to remain unmarried for ten years, until his hard service has passed and he can make her his wife. She swears to marry no other man.

He breaks faith with his strike-squadron and his taskmaster and turns back to rescue Leyma from a great culling, and here is where he faces his dire choice – to remain apart and live as a deserter, without home or family or service, with only her, or to obey his vows to the Grand Infantry, where war will certainly separate Davon and Leyma, perhaps forever. This part of the story is beautiful and terrifying, at least to its intended audience. The first act ends when Davon makes his agonized choice – to surrender himself and return to serve out his assignment. His aria is the most famous in all of Satedan opera, a masterpiece of honor and devotion and mourning.

Ten years pass. Leyma’s father has grown ill, and she has grown weary and alone. She handles his business for him, but his is a military post, life service, and when he dies another soldier will be promoted into his place and Leyma will be alone in the world. Her father rails at her and tells her that she must marry, that she must be taken care of when he is gone, but Leyma has her own aria of devotion (this is Ronon’s favorite piece, the one he often finds himself remembering), where she recalls the promise she made and the long years of waiting she has endured and declares again that she is no man’s but Davon’s, that she will have him or no one at all, and that in mere months they will be together at last.

Before her last notes have died away, of course, she receives word that his entire battalion has been slain at Kulonda Field.

_”It was a real battle – Kulonda Field. Five, six hundred years ago. They say twenty thousand died.”_

_“So she kills herself,” Rodney said wearily, as if he’d heard this story before and wasn’t impressed this time, either._

_“Who’s telling this story?” Rodney waved at him to go on, tipping the wine bottle upside down to let the dregs of it roll into his glass. “She can’t believe it could be true – maybe she thinks it’s a trick to make her marry someone else – so she runs away to find him herself. She gets to Kulonda Field and sees all the bodies, all the death, and she finally thinks she’ll never see him again. So she prays to the Ancestors to let her body fall beside Davon’s, and she stands at the edge of the pit-grave where all the soldiers’ bodies have been put and slits her throat and falls in. Only Davon isn’t really dead. He survived.”_

_“Of course he did.”_

_Ronon glared and Rodney held up his hands in surrender. “He goes down into the pit and carries up her body. It’s really...sad.”_

_“And then he kills himself, too, right? Because he can’t possibly go on living without her?”_

_“Wrong,” Ronon said with some satisfaction. “He re-enlists. No bride but duty, no love but death – that’s what he says in his last song. That part’s really old, as old as anything in the story, I think. I knew people in the service who used to say that about themselves. It’s kind of...just something people say.”_

_Rodney tapped his thumb on the edge of his wineglass, staring into it as if his aimless rhythm might actually summon more wine from somewhere to refill it. “Violent and depressing. The perfect love story. Though it does explain a lot about your masochistic streak.”_

_“It’s a good opera,” Ronon insisted. “It doesn’t make as good a story if everything turns out okay in the end.”_

Rodney has always had a very clear sense of when and how he’ll get married. There may be a practice engagement, something he asks her to do and she agrees to when they’re drunk (he’s probably won something important and they’re celebrating), and first thing in the morning they’ll both regret it, but neither will want to be the first to say so. They’ll plan a wedding half-heartedly for a few months and then invent some reason to break it off. If she has any initiative, she’ll sleep with one of his grad students.

That will just be a learning experience. When Rodney finally meets the woman he wants to marry, she will be tall and blonde and patrician, intelligent and ambitious but not brilliant, because geniuses never put the relationship first. Rodney is familiar with this law of the universe from every possible angle. She will be in some worthwhile field, but not physics – engineering or organic chemistry or possibly, if he’s feeling inventive, law.

She will not want to marry him. That goes without saying. She will value her independence, and he will frustrate her with his messiness and his tendency to stand her up and the way he makes fun of her friends, and her parents will hate him. Seventy percent of their sex will be make-up sex. She will love him desperately, but it will take some time before she is ready to admit that. It will eventually happen, in some intense conversation, half argument and half impassioned confession, probably in public, possibly in the rain. Yes, Rodney likes the idea that it’s raining. He will ask her to marry him right there, and she will say yes.

Rodney estimates they will be married for eight to ten years. Nothing will change between them; he will still leave wet laundry in the washing machine for days until it smells like mildew and stand her up and hate her friends and care more about his work than he does about her, although he’ll never say that, but then again he’ll never have to. She will give him two children and wildly resent the damage done to her own career. She will be bored and weary with listening to him discuss the finer point of thermodynamic breakthroughs that she can’t understand and doesn’t care about. She will leave him very abruptly, but if he’s honest with himself, he can’t say that he didn’t see it coming. Obviously.

He will let it be known that his heart is broken and use it as an excuse to stop dating seriously. He will throw himself into his work and only have sex at major conferences. His secretary will give him evil looks whenever she has to remind him that one of his children has a birthday soon and he has to come up with a present. He would spend more time with his children, except he doesn’t have more time, and they don’t like him anyway. They think he abandoned their mother, even though she’s the one who took them and moved away. Rodney will let it slide, feeling that adulthood is really the appropriate time to work out your issues with your parents, so they have plenty of time.

It all really only stands to reason. Nobody who really knew Rodney McKay would visualize any other scenario.

_”Move in with me,” Rodney gasped before he’d even finished softening inside Dex, before his body was fully aware that the million crossing currents of pleasure zapping through him were sense-memory now because his actual orgasm was over._

_Dex wrapped a hand around Rodney’s and pushed it between them. His cock slipped through Rodney’s clumsy grasp, sweat and pre-come and post-coital lassitude, and when Dex said, “No, no,” Rodney honestly thought that’s what he was protesting. He forced his mind to focus on controlling his fingers and gripped tightly at the root, and Dex made a few bone-deep grunts of pleasure, but then opened his eyes and said, “No, I can’t,” so that this time Rodney couldn’t miss the referent._

_“Move in with me,” Rodney said again. “Don’t think about it, just – do you want to? You want to, don’t you?”_

_His body surged under Rodney’s hand, but he touched his fingers to the side of Rodney’s head with startling gentleness and let them slide down to Rodney’s sensitized neck until he shivered. “I won’t dishonor you like that.”_

_“_ Dishonor _me? What kind of a reason is that?” Rodney didn’t even_ have _any honor, insofar as he was aware._

_“Your laws. Among your people....”_

_“There’s no law against it! Not for you and me, anyway.”_

_“Custom, then. I know more about your ways than I used to. I know it’s considered dishonorable.”_

_“_ My people _are in the midst of a bit of a disagreement on that subject, not that it matters, since believe me, this would be just a drop in the bucket in terms of what some people think is wrong with me,_ not that it matters _, since I don’t care.”_

_“I care.”_

_He didn’t really deserve an orgasm after turning Rodney down for a reason as stupid as that one (he’d been prepared to be turned down, but it was supposed to be because of John, and Rodney had a whole list of replies ready for that, but he’d prepared absolutely nothing in defense of his_ honor _), but, well, it wasn’t exactly motivated by altruism. He loved the way Dex came when he was on his back, his elbows braced on the mattress and his head thrown back, all those long, smooth planes of his stomach and his chest and his throat frozen solid with the intensity of it. He loved the way he went loose afterwards, collapsing flat and gulping for air, unable to do much of anything but allow Rodney to put his sticky hand on Dex’s hip and kiss his soft, expectant mouth._

_“Can’t you just think about it?” Rodney said against his lips. “This isn’t some all-the-blood-has-left-my-brain fluke; I mean it. I want you to.”_

_“I know you mean it,” he said. He put both arms around Rodney and pulled him down against his chest. “And you know I can’t say yes. Don’t ask me again, okay? I don’t like saying no to you.”_

_“You could at least be honest,” Rodney said into his shoulder. His voice didn’t even sound like his own, rusty and a little shrill, and God he didn’t want to cry, he hadn’t cried over anything in – he didn’t even know. Years, maybe decades. “It’s not about my honor. You won’t because of John.”_

_“Go easy, my friend,” Dex murmured in a strangely musical, lilting tone that Rodney had never heard from him before, his strong hand petting Rodney from head to shoulder. “Na, be easy. Time passes, all passes.”_

_This, too, shall pass. Rodney supposed every culture had to come equipped with a cliche for every occasion. “I think that’s what I’m afraid of.”_

He almost woke up when Rodney got out of bed, but it was Rodney’s room, after all, so he probably wasn’t running far.

It was daylight when he woke up with any real conviction, and Rodney was sitting at the mess of their dinner table with Sheppard’s note in his hands again, studying it like a text that might be able to give up its secrets to him after a year or a lifetime in meditation on the subject. Ronon loved John Sheppard a lot, but he didn’t really expect that many layers of mystery from him.

“Let me see it,” he said, coming up to Rodney’s shoulder and holding out his hand. Rodney folded it in half and pulled it further out of his reach. “It’s not even addressed to you,” Ronon pointed out, leaning across him and grabbing it out of his hand. “It’s as much mine as it is yours.”

“He would never have expected you to catch the reference,” Rodney grumbled. “It was clearly meant for me.”

Ronon supposed that might be true. It read like a simple enough sentence to him; if there were layers of mystery, they obviously were only for Rodney’s eyes. “Be excellent to each other,” he read out loud.

Rodney reached back and snatched it back from his hands. “See, it doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? I was right, wasn’t I?”

“It means....” What? That he wasn’t angry over the two of them? But Ronon had never imagined that he was. That he expected them to care for each other in ways that – that perhaps John could not imagine himself capable of? He’d suspected that for some time, although it was interesting to have evidence that John was conscious of the issue. That he was...standing down? “Okay. You tell me what it means.”

“Who gives a damn?” Rodney said wearily. “Whatever it means, he’ll only change his mind later. He’s not interested, then he’s interested, it’s not serious, then it’s serious, now he’s quoting me comedy, he wants me to be with you, he can’t stand that I’m with you, now he wants me to be with you again, and I really – the truth is, I’m starting not to _care_ what he wants.”

“You don’t mean that.” He didn’t really believe that Rodney did, but still, there was something coming off him, some kind of electric intensity that made Ronon uncomfortable. He moved away and sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his pants.

“Don’t I?” He waited, but if he was waiting for Ronon to answer that it was kind of pointless. He didn’t like repeating himself. “Maybe I don’t,” Rodney said softly. “I do care, obviously I care. Maybe I just don’t care enough anymore. I was lying there last night...next to you, and I was wondering...am I supposed to feel grateful to him, does he want me to be overcome by his amazing generosity, that he lets me have this, occasionally, when the mood seizes him?”

“I said from the very beginning,” he says slowly, “I said – I didn’t want to be the thing that pushes you apart.”

Rodney crumpled the page between his fingers and tossed it onto the table. “Oh, you won’t be, trust me. I will.”

He didn’t know where Rodney was starting to go, but in this strange mood Ronon didn’t trust him one bit, so he caught him before the door, one hand on his shoulder and one on his belly. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said, leaning his face down beside Rodney’s. “You don’t have great instincts.”

“Would you want me? Just me, I mean. If it weren’t – if I weren’t – if I just asked you to be with me, the two of us, and if you weren’t all neurotically duty-bound and stubborn and cultishly attached to this ridiculous idea that he knows what the hell he’s doing or gives orders that are in any way sound and useful and fair? Would I be...something you’d want?”

“When aren’t you something I want? But....” He was sure there were.... He knew there were reasons, but he couldn’t think....

Rodney twitched under his hands, and against his better judgement, Ronon loosened his arms enough for Rodney to turn around and face him. “I don’t want you to blame yourself and fall on your sword or whatever it is you do, all right? If it’s...if it’s over between me and John, it’s not because of you, it’s because I’m tired of trying to divine John’s emotional state from entrails and knucklebones. I know you have this romance-drenched view of us, but the truth is, he’s always driven me more or less insane – and probably the reverse, too, in all honesty.”

“I can’t...I can’t live with you. It doesn’t matter if you give up on him or not, he still feels how he feels about you, and he could never have – to turn right around and give me what he’d never be allowed to get from you, it’s just.... It would hurt him, and I can’t. Even for you, I can’t.”

He nodded stiffly, then put his arms around Ronon’s chest and leaned into him. “I don’t suppose it would do any good if I just asked you to be selfish, would it? Because I’m feeling extremely selfish at this point in my life – I don’t know how much longer I have, you know, before I give my life heroically for the greater good, or possibly in some freak technological accident – and at this point in my life, his problems are just more than I can cope with. I love you, I miss you, and you don’t think you could possibly see your way clear to – you know. Go along with me on this?”

 _I am a spent coin, a gift still given. I am sworn to silence, unless it be to speak his name_ – Leyma’s aria, the one Ronon liked best. He’d heard it long before it had entered his mind that he would one day be a soldier, long before he understood that he was meant to place himself in Davon’s position. He felt for her instead, so helpless, all the world’s decisions narrowed for her to only two: no love but death, only to keep faith with love or to die.

A part of him had known, ever since he joined John and Rodney in their bed – that bed, this very room, would sooner or later be his Kulonda Field. He just wasn’t sure whose story he was caught up in: Leyma’s destruction or Davon’s loneliness. She was the one who died, but it was Davon who vowed himself to the cause of dying, and John had been right about at least one thing: he wasn’t ready to die. It held no appeal for him at all.

“I’ll go,” he said, putting a hand behind Rodney’s neck and kissing him once on the lips, once on the forehead. “I’ll go along with you. Just show me where.”

“Now that,” Rodney said, wrapping his hands hard around Ronon’s arms and closing his eyes, “is how you ask for it.”


	9. Mutual Thing

A year and a half ago – a little more – Rodney came to his room, drunk as a skunk and clueless and infatuated, and he passed out in John’s bed, and at the time John felt sorry for him, and kind of proud of him at the same time. Trapped in an alien galaxy with vampire overlords, held hostage with the scar to prove it, watching people die, constantly under the gun to solve problems no one else even knew how to start in on – Jesus, there were worse ways to deal with the stress than getting bombed on Athosian moonshine and hooking up with.... Well, there were a lot of worse ways.

A year and a half ago. It felt longer.

John sat down on the foot of his bed and started unlacing his boots. “You plan to spend the night?”

“Sorry?” Rodney said.

John toed off his boot and started on the other one. “I’m saying, let’s do this in the morning. I always like to get a kiss before the kiss-off, if at all possible.”

“John....”

He kicked off the other boot and pulled both his socks off before finally looking up at Rodney, who was still hovering by the door like he might make a dash for it at any moment. Jeez, he hadn’t even been this skittish the first time. Of course, drunk, John reminded himself. “Look, I know,” he said. “Blah blah, relationship conversation, we’re over, it’s my fault, it’s your fault, it’s nobody’s fault, it’s a mutual thing, we’ll always love each other, in our own special way. Spend the night,” he said, letting his voice soften. “Let’s do it in the morning.”

“A mutual thing,” Rodney repeated flatly. After a second, he said, “Actually, to tell you the truth, I haven’t really been – sure if there is an us anymore. For a while now.”

A month ago – a little less – Rodney came to his room and yelled at him for not having any faith. It had been a homecoming; he’d believed that. It felt, at the time, like coming home. It was the last time he’d made love with Rodney. “I realize it’s hard on Atlantis to just quit returning somebody’s phone calls,” he said, “but you certainly gave it a shot.”

“You left me a _note_. You left me a note with five words on it!”

“And you thought that’s how I would break up with you?”

“Oh, who the hell knows how you do these things?”

“I have the decency to do it in person. I’m not the asshole you think I am.”

“I don’t....” Rodney sighed and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I don’t think you’re an asshole.”

“I wasn’t breaking up with you,” John said, looking down at his hands on his knees. His watch. His sweatband. Everything normal, nothing changed. “I was just trying to make you happy. You weren’t happy.”

“I was,” Rodney said, faint and unconvincing. “I loved you.”

Always fun to hear in the past fucking tense. “Just...don’t rewrite this in your head so that I dumped you, okay? This is your idea.”

“I thought it was a mutual thing,” Rodney said. John snorted.

Rodney turned away, facing the door. A thin strip down the center glowed briefly, brightly – the door unlocking itself on command.

An hour ago – a little less – Rodney said _We should really talk_ , and John had known. He’d known it was coming for a while, and he’d known an hour ago, and it shouldn’t feel like a surprise, but it was hitting him that way anyhow, the crunch of disbelief in his gut.

Rodney put his hand on the doorframe and leaned for a second, and then turned around again with his back against it defensively. “I take it back,” he said. “You are an asshole.”

“Oh, great,” John said, pulling his shirt off and throwing it across the room. “Because I really hate amicable breakups. Look, stay or go, Rodney.”

“I can’t believe you have the audacity to sit there and play the martyr. You fobbed me off on somebody else– “

“You’re handling the _fucking hardship_ of that really, really well.”

“You left me a note! You slept with that woman in the Cloister– “

“I waited six months for you!”

“You never believed I was coming back for you! You brooded for six months! And then you made a pass at Dex, don’t _think_ I don’t know you did that, and then you left me a goddamn note and _then_ – this is my favorite part – and then you fucked Princess Bimbo– “

“Don’t even _think_ about playing the fidelity card. You _lose_ at fidelity, Rodney. The twenty-three days you didn’t fuck somebody besides me were the days he didn’t offer!”

Rodney bristled up like one of those spiny fish that double their size before they attack and said in a low tone that John never would have though he could pull off, “Don’t ever compare him to one of your tacky whores. Ever.”

Like he had a whole supply closet full of them somewhere. Okay, she hadn’t exactly been his type, but just wanting something fucking simple for once, something that wasn’t completely fraught and dangerous and conflicted on any one of a million levels, didn’t make it...as tawdry as Rodney wanted to make it. “You think you can cool it with the character assassination?” the gentleman in John made him say. “You knew her for all of three minutes.”

Folding his arms over his chest, Rodney said, “All right. Look me in the eye and tell me that a _hundred_ of her was worth one of him and I’ll apologize.”

Trick question. A hundred _thousand_ of pretty much anybody wasn’t worth one of Ronon, and nobody knew it better than Rodney. “You’re right,” John said. “It’s not the same thing. I’m sorry.”

If he’d set out deliberately to fuck with Rodney’s head, he probably couldn’t have done it better. “Well...well...yes,” Rodney said. “Yes. You should be.”

“I am,” John said soberly. He wondered how long it would be before he could go back to teasing Rodney like he used to – before this whole thing stopped making things awkward between them. The possibility that the answer was _never_ hung at the edge of his thoughts, but if he didn’t look straight at it, it might go away.

Maybe it was Rodney whose ultimate goal was deliberately fucking with John’s head, because he did the last thing John expected him to do: came over and sat down on the bed next to John. He put an arm behind him, his hand on John’s bare waist, and said, “So much for our eminently mature and rational parting of the ways.”

“We can take some time apart now,” John said. “On a team-basis, I mean. If we’re going through with this thing, there’s no way I’m going to be bopping on and off the planet. I need to be here for the whole thing.”

“For the– Oh. So...it’s definite now?”

“It’s pretty definite. Don’t start sounding so worried now; you throwing your weight behind Carson is half the reason Elizabeth okayed it at all.”

“Well, there’s no point spending all this time developing the retrovirus if we’re afraid to use it, is there? It has to be tested eventually, and Carson says it’s viable now.”

John shrugged and let his own arm move, slipping the tips of his fingers against Rodney’s back, under his shirt. “Well, Elizabeth agrees with you.”

Rodney’s ribs moved jerkily, either a little laugh or a reaction to John’s fingers sliding around his side. “He’s furious with me. I mean the kind of furious where I’m a little afraid to go to sleep next to him.”

“Maybe you should spend the night here, then,” John said against his neck. “I’ll protect you.”

Rodney kissed him, one hand on his lower back and one hand moving gently up his chest, and the confidence in him now was amazing, slower and sexier and several orders of magnitude more sure of himself than he’d been a year and a half ago. That was nice. John had some vague memory that he’d started this to help Rodney out, to make him better at coping with life and more comfortable in his own skin, and he’d done that. That part was a success.

When he tried to nibble on Rodney’s ear, Rodney pushed him away. “I’m not going to stay,” he said, his voice calm and his face a mess of emotions, while his hands flew in the general direction of the door like he was signaling from the pitcher’s mound. “I’m...going to...go. Now.”

And that was it. Goodbye and be seeing you. No-fault and no-mess, nothing that you could look at and say, _this_ is what’s changed, this thing right here.

He had to wonder what he was holding back for now.

“There’s one thing I want to ask you,” John heard himself say. He kept his fingers loose and comfortable on the bedspread – no need to go overboard, no need to turn it sour. “I wasn’t going to – I figured it was – over and done, so why get into it? But now I’m thinking, what the hell, and I really want to know. Will you tell me something?”

Rodney turned around again. “Sure.”

“When I was infected with Carson’s prototype.... You were sleeping with him then.”

“You knew that already,” Rodney reminded him.

“How long did you wait? I mean, after I was stabilized. Are we talking a week, are we talking two days?” Rodney looked at his feet. “That night,” John said. If he were a gambling man, he could have broken the bank on that one.

“I was – scared,” Rodney said. “We were. We were – worried about you, and we – I didn’t want to be alone, I just– “

“That’s fine,” John said. “Whatever, I just want to know how it happened. What did you do, where did you do it, whose idea– “

“John, this isn’t– “

“No, I want to know. I want to know. It always bugged me...not knowing. I never kept anything from you, Rodney. I told you about M8K-339– “

“Yes, and _thank God_ you did, because what a terrible tragedy it would have been, going to my grave without knowing you got him to blow you– “

“I never kept secrets from you. I never shut you out. You don’t want to be with me anymore, that’s your choice. You get what you need from him, I understand that. But I want to know what happened between you two, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

For a minute, it looked like Rodney was going to fight him out of sheer stubbornness. “Okay,” he finally said, and made a few empty starter-gestures with his hands. “There’s not all that much to tell. We stayed quite a while in the infirmary; he had to get a bloodtest because of that little fluid-exchange issue, the one I trust I don’t have to remind you about. I went back to my room. He followed me. I didn’t want to.... I thought about, about not...about not. But he was just...he was there, I was still freaked out.... I suppose, technically speaking, I was using him. You were still...all I could think about, at that point. Then we.... Is this really what you want? You want, what, _details_?”

“Yeah,” John said tightly. “I want to know everything.”

Rodney sighed. “We still thought there was a chance he could be infected, so we were...careful. He gave me a handjob, and then we laid in bed for a while and talked – I don’t remember what we talked about. Nothing. Medical called and said they had his test results back and he was fine. We’d been – from earlier, from the fooling around we did earlier, I knew he wanted me to go down on him– “

“Rodney, everybody wants you to go down on them,” John said, unable to suppress a little smile. “When is that going to get through to you?”

He smiled back, just as fleetingly. “But he was doing that stupid thing he does, trying to – perform, you know how he does – trying to be the big, butch hero, all your fantasies on tap, hot-and-cold running porn. You...you know how he is.”

“You should try being his CO,” John said.

“I’d asked him to fuck me before, and he thought he was supposed to. I had to kind of...you know, _make_ him take the damn blowjob. I mean, not that there was...a lot of force brought to bear. As you can imagine. I’m not saying I _overpowered_ him or anything. I just had to make...kind of a point of it. And I guess that’s when I started.... I started feeling badly. Because he was – lonely, I mean, I don’t think I thought of it in exactly those terms, but I could tell he was – I knew he was. And he always tries so hard to.... I just didn’t really get it til that night. How much he – wanted somebody to be with – how much he liked me. And I was scared to death, because there was you – obviously, there was you to think about, but...you weren’t _all_ I could think about. Anymore. And I could tell I’d – hurt him – fucked with his head – only I couldn’t really apologize, or I could, but not while actually meaning it, because I wasn’t. Sorry. I love him,” he added almost pleadingly. “I really do love him, John. I suppose I did even then.”

And that part was...fine. You couldn’t help that. “You asked him to fuck you.”

Rodney frowned and looked like he was rewinding through his own ramble. “Yes, I...well, I – don’t think I asked outright, but I remember saying I wanted– “

“That was the one thing, Rodney.” Breathe, John thought. Chill. Yelling didn’t – some ugly scene couldn’t change anything, except to make it harder for them to work together from now on. He should just...say it and then move on. “That was the one and only thing I ever asked from you. Remember?”

“I...of course I do,” Rodney said faintly, exactly like he hadn’t remembered at all until just now. “I do, but....”

“But _what_?” John demanded when the sentence broke off in the middle and didn’t start up again. “You thought I was kidding, you didn’t give a damn, I wasn’t supposed to find out? Oh, no, wait, you were just so goddamn _worried about me_ that it slipped your mind. I asked you for _one thing_ , Rodney– “

“Well, maybe you should have asked me for more!” Rodney looked suddenly taken aback by his own reaction, then frowned over it consideringly, and apparently decided to stick with it. “You could have asked, you know. Any time.”

“You’d love to remember it that way. You know why I didn’t want you to? Because I knew you’d only do that with somebody you were in love with – for as much good as asking somebody not to fall in love with another man– “

“I wasn’t in love with him then. I was yours to lose back then.”

“That’s such bullshit. You were fucking made for him, he’s everything you were always pissed that I wasn’t. He’s better-looking than I am, he’s better in bed, he’s stronger– “

“I don’t _care_ about– “

“He’s more romantic, he’s more intense, he doesn’t ask you for space, he doesn’t poke holes in your dignity, he worships at your feet like you always wanted me to and I never would! I did you a favor; I made it so that now you can tell yourself you never cheated, because you _would_ have if I’d demanded monogamy from you. You were always going to choose to be with him, because that’s what love means, and you love him!”

“ _So do you!_ Christ, will you just _admit_ that, just one time? What does this fucking stubbornness even do for you anymore, what does it get you?”

Wrong question, of course. Nine-tenths of Rodney’s stupidness about people came out of always asking the wrong questions. It wasn’t _John_ who was reaping the benefits of this particular stubborn streak. “Trust me, that’s not what you want,” he said. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, here, I’m just – look, you already know this. He loves you, and that’s real, and that’s great. For you and me, that’s what matters, but he’s not like you and me. I’m his taskmaster, Rodney. I could take him from you any time I wanted to, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing you could do about it. So if I sit here and tell you that I’m not in love with him and I don’t want him and I...still want you to be happy.... Then you should really quit arguing with me and go.” 

He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at Rodney’s face, but the pinched, wavering tone of his voice was pretty much just as bad. “I suppose this is where I say, ‘thank you, John?’”

“This is where you _go away_ ,” John said, every word shortened to the edge of intelligibility. They couldn’t stay like this much longer – John couldn’t maintain this much longer, so why wouldn’t he just _go_ – ?

And then he did. Easy as that. John leaned forward, his forehead almost to his knees, and laced his fingers tightly behind his neck, where he could feel the echoes of tension all the way down his back, all the way through his body. Jesus, this was horrible, this breakup thing. He didn’t know how some people managed to do it over and over and over again. It was John’s – he wasn’t sure, maybe third or fourth or something like that – and they got worse every time. Maybe he was just getting old and wise enough to know what he was giving up.

He went to bed half-dressed and woke up with one sun over the horizon. He’d been Rodney McKay’s ex-boyfriend for six hours by then – a little more.


	10. Graceland

_And I see losing love is like a window in your heart  
Everybody sees you’re blown apart  
Everybody feels the wind blow_  
– Paul Simon, “Graceland”

 

_“I’m glad you’re finally here,” the doctor says in her soft voice. “I’ve been wanting to talk with you for a long time.”_

_He’s not really in the mood to be soothed. “Why?” he says. “Because you think I’m sick?”_

_“No, but I think you’re in pain. I also think that sometimes pain is the only healthy response to an injury.”_

 

Ronon came to on one of the metal benches in the back of the Jumper, with someone’s jacket under his cheek. Smelled like Beckett’s. It was dark and cool and the bulkhead door was closed, but even before he opened his eyes, he knew he wasn’t alone. He’d know Rodney’s slightly quickened, shallow breathing anywhere.

He tried to say something, but only made a little noise into the jacket. Rodney laid down his handheld computer and pushed up to kneeling from his awkward position balanced on his knee and one hip on the floor. He brushed Ronon’s hair off of his face and laid his hand lightly on the small of Ronon’s back, looking at him in frustrated worry. The back of a Jumper wasn’t very soundproofed.

“You okay?” Ronon said. His voice grated out thickly, his mouth and throat still mostly asleep.

“Am _I_ okay,” Rodney repeated, turning a totally reasonable question into the source of some deep aggravation. “Am I okay. Are you okay?”

That was a tough one. Ronon scanned up and down his body mentally – not too achy, not too sore. Probably drugged, then, or still numb from shock. “I’ll live,” he said.

After an instinctive glance around the obviously empty compartment, Rodney leaned down and pressed his lips against Ronon’s bare shoulder. “Nice to know,” he said.

His hand was still lingering on Ronon’s back, slightly higher than before. Ronon tried to lift his head, then gave it up as more effort than it was worth. “Does it look real bad?” he said. “Worse than before?”

“Does _what_ look bad?”

“My back. The scarring.”

Rodney made a strange sound, almost a laugh, and moved his hand higher to cup his palm over the stitches. The touch was shadow-light, but still came close to hurting, and Ronon had to set his jaw to hold back a little hiss. “I don’t think it’ll look very different.”

“So not too ugly.”

“Beautiful,” Rodney corrected. It sounded weird coming from Rodney, who rarely handed out compliments without a protective barrier of qualifications and sometimes outright retractions. He was off his game.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Ronon heard himself mumble, his eyes falling closed the same way his mouth was opening: without his compliance.

Rodney stroked the back of Ronon’s neck and said, “I’m here.”

 

_“Colonel Sheppard tells me he’s worried about you. Your anger.”_

_“I like my anger. What’s so wrong with being angry?”_

_“That’s a good question. Maybe it depends on what you do with it?”_

_“I save lives with it. It makes me stronger.”_

_“Does it? What about when you’re not fighting anyone?”_

_He thinks he could almost smile, if he tried. “When’s that?”_

 

There wouldn’t be any reason to expect Ronon to be up and around on his first day back on Atlantis – except, of course, that it’s Ronon, and of course John should’ve expected it.

He also didn’t expect.... It was only two or three days ago that the four of them were tromping along through wet underbrush; John couldn’t even remember why anymore, if they’d ever had a reason to be on that planet at all, except that it was kind of what they did. The daily grind. Almost by definition, everything had been fine – normal – routine. Another day on the job, Rodney punching buttons on his PDA and stumbling and complaining, Teyla the picture of tranquility, not a hair out of place, Ronon.... Ronon a few paces behind them all, and the feeling of his certainty, his relentlessness almost warm on John’s back.

John had wanted a lot of things from Ronon over the past year, and he’d feared a few things, too. He’d never thought about Ronon changing, though. Never expected that at all.

He was still wearing leather pants, and those weird leather gauntlets he’d come up with somehow, but he’d traded his fitted shirt for a gray t-shirt, regular old Hanes, a little snug in the shoulders but bagging gracelessly around his slim waist. John could see the padded square of tape and gauze on his back, bulging under the cotton, and he assumed the wardrobe shift was to keep anything from rubbing too snugly against it.

He paused inside the gym door, directly in the slanted spotlight of late-morning light coming through the high windows, and something about the gray shirt or the white light or something else that John didn’t want to think about made him look washed-out and pale. His face was blank and composed in that way that John knew he could only manage when he was exhausted. Usually his emotions were only a degree or two harder to read than Rodney’s, although you rarely got verbal corroboration from Ronon.

“You can take a day off, you know,” John said, trading in his free weights for the towel he’d draped over the weight rack.

Ronon raised an eyebrow and said, “You trying to get rid of me?”

Not especially; John made it a policy never to lift weights when a bigger guy than him was in the room (not out of vanity, just...okay, out of vanity), but since he hated lifting weights, that was no hardship. “I don’t want Beckett to kick my ass. He’s getting kind of freakily protective of you.”

“We gonna talk?” Ronon asked, delicately scornful. “Or are we going to fight?” Neither sounded very safe, and that thought must have shown on John’s face, because Ronon smirked and said, “Everything I’ve got hurts right now. This is the fairest fight you’re ever going to get out of me.”

“Oh, great,” John said. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

“I always do,” Ronon said.

It might have been a fair fight, but it wasn’t the first one of those that John had lost. He wasn’t even sure how he wound up flat on his back – it happened pretty fast, after a long, slow build – but suddenly there he was, on a mat that smelled like old sweat, blinking up at the fresh sweat beading at the join of Ronon’s neck and his collarbone. “Nice,” he said weakly.

Ronon let go of his arms and knelt up, apparently oblivious to the way that he had John’s thighs pinned between his. For one panicked and pathetically eager second, John thought he was reaching back to pull his t-shirt over his head by the collar, but he was untying the cord knotted behind his neck and fishing the one bone necklace he still wore out from under the shirt. He folded his hand around John’s and then withdrew it, leaving the necklace in his slack palm.

“Don’t even think about it,” John said hoarsely. “You didn’t do anything wrong, and I wouldn’t give a fuck if you had.”

To his surprise, Ronon said, “I know. I just...don’t want it anymore. Everyone who ever would have given a fuck is dead except me. But I didn’t want to just throw it away, either. You were nice to me when I was barely even a person anymore. This belonged to – him, to that guy. He’d want you to have it.”

That guy. That mud-streaked predator who could aim a gun like breathing and struggled to remember how to use his voice, the one who moved with his body curled forward like he was a week and a half from dropping back down the evolutionary scale to all fours, but whose eyes shone a little brighter, a little deeper, when he said _name and rank._

“Tell him thanks,” John said, closing his fingers over bare bone. 

 

_“Do you like it here?”_

_“Yeah. It’s okay.”_

_“So you’re happy.”_

_He knows this trick. “If I say yes, I’m a liar, right?”_

_“No. I don’t think you’re a liar, and I don’t think you’ll say yes unless you mean it. Are you happy here?”_

_She’s right; he’s not a liar. That doesn’t leave him with very much to say._

 

Atlantis was the best-behaved base John had ever served on. He thought maybe it was because they were all the hand-picked elite of eleven militaries foreign and domestic, or because fighting aliens shifted your priorities just like all the movies promised, but he liked to take the credit himself for a managerial policy that Ford used to call, _Don’t start none, won’t be none_. It was like DADT, except that under John’s version, all the right people would get fired.

For whatever reason, though, there were almost never fights to break up on Atlantis, and when there were, the goddamn civilians were inevitably the instigators. Sometimes John got lucky with those and could serve them smoothly over to Rodney’s side of the net. Sometimes they _involved_ Rodney, and that was a little more awkward. Elizabeth had already politely declined to get involved in any situation that required handling Rodney, because _You have such a good rapport with him, John. He really respects your point of view._ Sometimes John forgot that Elizabeth was a diplomat by trade, until he actually witnessed her weasel out of something while explaining why it was really to everyone’s benefit.

John didn’t know that he really had the rapport with Rodney that people thought he did, although he couldn’t think of a way to set the record straight without going into that whole part where he was Rodney’s unbelievably bitter ex-boyfriend, but he had to admit that he was one of the few people who could throw the fear of God into Rodney, when he made the effort. So he didn’t even bother looking around for backup when Rodney got into it with some much younger and scrawnier scientist (Mitchell Radford – John went to the trouble of memorizing everyone’s name, even if he hadn’t figured out a non-exhausting and boring way to get to know all of them). Everyone else figured the situation the way Elizabeth did: Rodney was John’s to deal with.

He made his way across the cafeteria without much listening to or caring about the substance of the argument; it was more Rodney’s body-language that had him worried, because Rodney wasn’t and probably never would be the kind of guy to swing first and think later, but he wasn’t exactly a civilian in the regular sense of the word, either, and – well, you just never knew. He argued with his body now in ways he never used to, muscles tensed and just a little bit too far into someone else’s space, all his hackles up. So there was something about overrated math skills in there, and something about _asshole_ and something about a short walk through a long wormhole home, but mostly John was thinking _someday he’s gonna go at someone like that and they’re going to bust him in the face._

“Stop,” John said in his best not-fucking-around-anymore tone, bringing his hand down on Rodney’s shoulder. “Stop it; I don’t know what this is, but you’re pushing it too far, okay?”

“Oh, leave me the hell alone,” Rodney said, throwing off his hand, but he did ease back away from John and Dr. Radford both. “God, I came in for a damn plate of french fries, I certainly had no interest in talking to either one of you, let alone being talked down to.”

“I wasn’t talking down to you, Rodney,” John started, but then thought the better of trying to do this like friends. “If you can’t act like you’re more than seven years old,” he said, “then just stay out of everyone else’s space. Other people have their own damn french fries to eat.”

Rodney looked from one of them to the other, and John worked at reminding himself that he hadn’t earned that betrayed expression. It was just...Rodney, being the way he could be. But he was still left feeling uncomfortable when Rodney stalked out of the cafeteria, like he hadn’t handled this right at all. That was John’s legendary rapport with Rodney McKay, for you.

He didn’t have any practical reason to follow up on it, and God knew in the mood Rodney was in, he was more likely to make it worse. But on a totally impractical level, he just...didn’t like having Rodney look at him that way.

Rodney was just a flight of stairs down from the cafeteria, leaning on the wall like he was catching his breath, though he didn’t seem winded. John stopped a few stairs above him and shoved his hands in his pockets, an awkward gesture that he was hoping would show he hadn’t come here to continue anybody’s fight. “What do you want?” Rodney asked, sounding tired.

Good question. “Is there...something going on?” John managed to say.

Instead of expressing disbelief in John’s constantly demonstrated stupidity, which would have been relatively normal, Rodney tipped his head back and rubbed the side of neck before he let his hand gesture in the air. “Do you know who that was?”

“Um...astrometrics?” John said, trying and half-succeeding at visualizing his personnel file.

“Nobody,” Rodney sighed. “He’s nobody, but he used to date....” Oh. John hadn’t paid much attention to that whole – thing, figuring it wasn’t his business. But he should have guessed that Rodney had. “He asked me how Ronon was doing.”

That bastard, John thought, but he managed to restrain himself from overt sarcasm. He shrugged to convey that he still wasn’t sure how those could be interpreted as fighting words. Even taking into account Rodney’s weird jealous streak, that seemed like an overreaction. “He’s probably.... You know, worried. Ronon’s been keeping to himself the last few days.”

Rodney made one of his surprisingly eloquent snorting sounds and put a hand behind his neck to support his head as he cracked it first one way and then the other. “Oh, well, I’m sure he is worried,” he said, managing somehow to make it catty. But the cattiness dropped away when he turned his head and looked up in John’s direction with those big, pathetic eyes that always just wrecked whatever impartiality John managed to work himself up to. “I don’t know how he is,” Rodney said, his voice cracking a little. “That whole – time alone thing...includes me.”

That sent a small, cold thread of fear through John faster than he could rationally process the words. “You haven’t seen him either?”

“A couple of e-mails,” Rodney said. “He says he has...things to think about.”

“Well...he probably does,” John tried. For whatever it was worth.

“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Rodney said, flat and bitter and, underneath it, hurt. “For whatever that’s worth.”

A little bit, they still had rapport.

 

_“How’s your love life?”_

_“I thought we were going to talk about– Do we have to talk about sex?”_

_“That isn’t really what I asked, but we can talk about that, too. How’s your sex life?”_

_“Fine. Good.”_

_“Are you angry at him, too?”_

_“At who?”_

_“At Rodney.” He’s known for a while that people know, but he still doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t say anything. “Ronon, it’s okay. You can say whatever you want to here. You don’t have to protect him.”_

_This time he does smile. “Sure I do.”_

 

“Hey, you made it,” Cadman called out, smiling at him from the far end of the pier.

“Said I would.” He stepped out gingerly onto the metal with bare feet, but it had cooled off overnight and stayed cool even now that the first sun was coming up, splashing orange light on its reflective surface. “I thought there’d be more people.”

Cadman tightened up her ponytail, the hem of her purple top drawing up to expose the ring in her navel that she only ever took out on missions. “Sometimes we get five or six,” she said. “Sometimes it’s just me.”

“Maybe if it wasn’t so early,” he grumbled.

“Sunrise is a bitch like that,” she agreed cheerfully. He’d forgotten that she was a morning person. When he reached the end of the pier, she startled him by throwing her arms around his neck. Hesitantly at first, then with more warmth, he slipped his arms around her waist and held on, listening to the whisper-roar of the sea passing under their feet. “You know you have friends, right?” she said.

“I didn’t – I don’t – Can we not talk about– “

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, pulling away and rolling her eyes at him affectionately. “Big man. Wouldn’t want to get the scary feelings all over you. Okay, ready to do this?”

“I’d be more ready if I could’ve worn my own clothes,” he grumbled. He’d been fairly successful for a whole year at being left alone to dress himself the way he liked, instead of getting stuck with those ugly gray synthetic uniforms. But when he’d asked Cadman about showing him how to do this morning thing, she stood firm on the subject of ugly synthetic clothes and found him a pair of pants with a weird plastic texture and a stretchy waist. He hated them. “I can run in my own clothes. I can take you down in them.”

“This requires a little something we call flexibility.”

He didn’t think he liked the implication. “I’m flexible.”

Cadman gave him a wicked sidelong grin and said, “No, _I’m_ flexible.”

“Yeah,” he said, wanting to smile for the first time in a few days. “You are.”

“Okay, like this,” she said, facing out toward the sun and the ocean. Ronon stood beside her in the same position, his back straight and feet together, his hands pressed together in front of his chest. “Standing seems like the easy part, but it’s not,” she said. He let his eyes drift mostly shut against the warm glare of the first sun and listened to her voice. “You have to stop thinking about yourself like you’re a whole bunch of body parts wrapped up in your skin. You have to stand like you’re all one piece. Weight on both feet. Head not forward or back, your neck just continuing on up from your spine. Just being here is the hard part. Just standing still. Now, when you bring your hands up, don’t push your shoulders anywhere, either. It’s all one line, from your fingertips to the soles of your feet. You can move your head now, though – you can look up at the sky. Just keep your neck long, and lift up with your chest so you’re not making any one body part do all the stretching. You’re stretching up to the sun with all of you.”

They used to do something like this back home, at the start of every school day. Not exactly like this, but close enough that it was hard not to remember. Cadman was prettier than any of the masters who ever taught him in school, though. “Where’d you learn to do this?” he asked, savoring the long stretch in his arms that was so unlike the way he held his muscles for a strike or a grapple.

“My mom’s a hippie,” she said lightly. Whatever that meant. “She teaches yoga. Feels good, doesn’t it?” He nodded. He felt warm and loose, but still aware and in control of his body. He’d probably never be all one piece again, but it was easier to pretend out here in the quiet dawn, looking at the sparkling water instead of at the city. “Okay, now breathe out when you do this,” she said, and folded suddenly forward with her hands on the pier and her forehead touching her shins.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he said, and felt the warmth of her laugh rising up toward the sun.

 

_“I can’t talk about sex.”_

_“It makes you uncomfortable?”_

_“No. Yes. I don’t know if I’m saying things right. Your language has a lot of words for it. The Ring puts new languages in your head – it puts the words in, but if there’s no exact match in your own language, it’s hard to.... It’s hard to know for sure when it’s right to use different ones. Satedan doesn’t have...it just doesn’t have many words, compared to most languages. It’s all in the way you put them together. You have a lot of words.”_

_“So there’s a language barrier. You feel self-conscious when you speak English?”_

_“Sometimes. Yeah.”_

 

John really did make a good-faith effort not to horn in on the whole situation. This wasn’t summer camp, and Ronon didn’t have to be anywhere he didn’t want to be. The guy hadn’t even taken a vacation in a year. Neither had John, but he definitely would have insisted on his right to it if he’d ever cared, whereas Ronon would have trouble asking for help if he had a soup spoon lodged in his eyesocket.

His good-faith effort lasted right up until he tried to ping Ronon and realized that his headset was turned off. That sent John directly down to Ronon’s quarters – not to make him do anything he didn’t want to do, but just to make sure he was okay.

Nobody answered the door, so John broke the lock (with his brain, which seemed somehow less invasive – he’d technically only _thought_ about breaking and entering) and went in.

When his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, John’s sense of uneasiness redoubled. Ronon had never owned all that much, but the room they gave him came fully furnished, and all of it was now stacked against the far wall – the light, minimalist Ancient furniture, his few changes of clothes, his gun and his sword, the weird vase they’d found in the room and the embroidered pillow Teyla had given him, the laptop he never used for anything but Minesweeper and e-mail, his latest borrowed book ( _The Bourne Identity_ ), his off-world gear. The rest of the room looked spookily barren, just an empty room with a bed and Ronon lying there on his back.

He didn’t give any indication of noticing that John was in the room until John said, “Packing?” – lightly, like it was a big joke and not the most terrifying thing he’d never bothered to worry about until right now.

“No,” Ronon said. “I just...felt cluttered up. So I moved things around.”

That wasn’t wholly reassuring, but neither was it logic that John could actually dispute. He took a few steps closer to the bed and said, “Hey, are you hungry? I was thinking about taking a sandwich up to one of the observation decks, if you wanted to....” – which sounded ridiculously like he was asking for a date, but John didn’t know of any smooth way to say, _Hey, what would it take to get you out of your quarters sometime this century?_

“No thanks,” Ronon said. “I just want.... I have some things to work out – in my head.”

“You want to...talk about it?” John asked in a voice that was only slightly strangled. He wondered if it was love or dementia when you found yourself saying those words in all seriousness.

Whichever, Ronon seemed to be fortunately free of it. “No. It’s just stuff I haven’t thought about in a long time. And I need to.”

“Okay,” John said, even though his skin itched at the idea of leaving Ronon alone here in this gutted room. “Listen, would you just do me a favor and....” _Talk to McKay_ , but at the last second John found he couldn’t quite say it. It was more than– That had to be way above and beyond the call. He’d stayed friends with both of them, he wanted them to be happy, but fuck, if they needed some kind of goddamn go-between with each other, they’d have to find somebody else. That was all there was to it. “Keep you headset turned on,” he said instead. “In case I need to get in contact with you.”

“I might need...some time,” Ronon said toward the ceiling. “Is that okay with you?”

“Sure it is,” John said. “You don’t have to.... Whenever you’re ready. We’re not going anywhere.”

 

_“It’s been a long time since you worked in a team situation.”_

_“I guess.”_

_“Colonel Sheppard says you adjusted quickly. He says he’s always able to count on you to follow his orders.” He nods. Sounds like something Sheppard would say. He’s insubordinate all the time with Sheppard, but then so is everybody else, so he probably hasn’t noticed. “That’s why he’s been so concerned about you recently. When you attacked Michael against his orders– “_

_“Don’t call him that.”_

_“Michael?”_

_“That’s not his name.”_

_“I understand that you– “_

_“No, you don’t.”_

_She leans back in her chair and pulls at her lower lip while she thinks. It’s the first time she’s looked to him like a human being. “Maybe I don’t.”_

 

He’d had nightmares since he came to Atlantis, on and off – jumbled, angry dreams full of the eerie glowing panels of hive ships and bone-thin Wraith hands clutching at him, stripping him defenseless. Sometimes he dreamed that the hands turned human, reaching through the sticky cocoon strands and into his chest and prying him open with fleshy, callused fingers. When he raised his head it was always Kell, his eyes glittering with Wraith hunger and contempt. Sometimes he dreamed about the feel of the gun in his hand, the slow tension crawling up his muscles as he tightened his hand, as he fired. Once when he didn’t wake up just at that moment, he finished the dream by walking across the floor and rolling Kell’s body over with the toe of his boot. Only it didn’t look like Kell’s face, not quite, and he woke up sweating and nauseous, trying desperately to resolve the face in his mind, needing in his sleep-confused state to prove to himself that it wasn’t Sheppard, that he couldn’t possibly have murdered Sheppard by accident.

Nightmares were nothing new. He slept heavily, with no thrashing, and if he made noise in his sleep, no one he’d slept with had ever brought it up. He got used to waking up with his muscles tensing to spring and his chest too tight to breathe; his heart slowed and he could sort the images into memory and fantasy – nothing real, nothing that could hurt him. Then he’d go back to sleep.

Before Atlantis, he never dreamed at all. Maybe he was too exhausted. Maybe his real life was so far beyond his mind’s ability to imagine horror that he didn’t need nightmares.

Before going home again, he never dreamed about Melena. He thought maybe his brain was keeping her someplace safe for him. Someplace he might be able to return to, when the time was right, when he was ready to see her the way she was. Never thinking about her, never seeing her even in his dreams – it was hard in a way, because it left an empty space inside him, but he thought it was better than being stuck with the memory of her body being torn apart in a storm of fire and glass.

It took standing there again, in her hospital, for him to have that memory back at all. Until then, the few times he thought about it, all he heard was the shattering sound and the thunder. He _knew_ what had happened, but he couldn’t _remember_ it.

But he had her face back now, the doors to that safe place blown off their hinges. He could see her smile, the way her eyes got wide in amazement the first time she came against his fingers, her tears when she knew she was going to die. He could remember her clearly, any time he wanted to.

He dreamed he was in the cocoon, paralyzed, with sticky fibers even covering his eyes, so that all he could see was flickering light. He could hear her voice, calling his name without fear or sadness, with only the cool peace of a doctor telling him he was going to be all right. He dreamed of fingers ripping open the cocoon, reaching through, groping for his chest. But they were Melena’s fingers, small and surgeon-deft, and when her hand was sunk in to the wrist she touched his heart, still saying his name from far away, saying he was safe. “No one can touch you now,” she said, still soothing, but with a hint of sorrow in her voice. “Come with me,” she said. “Be with me.”

And then the cocoon tore open with a loud ripping noise and he felt himself fall forward, calling her name. But the body he collapsed against was larger, heavier. He still couldn’t see well, but it was Rodney, he knew from the shape of the hands on his ribs, he – knew. “Melena,” he said as the webbing was being pulled away from his eyes. “I have to go, I’m supposed to go with her.”

“It’s way too late for that now,” Rodney said crisply. “She’s gone on ahead. You’ll never catch up.” The last of the fibers dropped away, and he could see Rodney holding him up, crackling with impatience. “Hey, hello, pay attention!” Rodney said, snapping his fingers in front of Ronon’s nose. “Are you going to get me out of here or not?”

Yes, he tried to say, of course I am, but then it happened all at once, images piling up on top of each other – Kell stepping out of the shadows, raising the gun with a hard-eyed smile, the thunder, and it wasn’t metal or energy that tore through Rodney from behind, but a million shards of glass and an explosion of blood, Ronon unharmed in the middle of it. Everything spun; nothing held steady except the sound of his own voice, yelling _No, Kell!_

And then he was home in his own bed – not his bed in Atlantis, but the one he’d shared with Melena for such a small lifetime that he could almost fold it up between his hands. His eyes were closed but he could hear the noise of the street outside and the birds nesting in the eaves. She lay against him and over him, waking him with soft, lazy kisses that were too slick, like blood, and when he slipped his hands over her waist he could feel bones jutting out from shattered skin. “Come with me,” she murmured sweetly into his mouth, and he was too frightened to open his eyes. He could only shake his head. She wiped his face with her fingers and said, “Don’t give up now, love. You’ve come so far, and you’ve almost caught me. You said you knew a place we could hide....”

He opened his eyes then, but all he could see was the bright heat of the bomb. He woke up choking on someone’s name, but he wasn’t sure whose.

Sooner or later, his heart slowed down and he was able to stretch out from the tight, panicked ball he’d curled himself into. Only a dream – memories, fantasies. Messages, at best, and he didn’t need any help picking up the signal in this particular case.

He never had nightmares while he was Running. That was a hard life, focused and somehow impersonal. He could have been anyone, from anywhere. Didn’t matter. But here – here on Atlantis, everything around him, everything he touched, was heavy with his own story, with memory. He’d tried to get it all as far out of his sight as he could. That helped. Obviously not enough, but....

Ronon rolled out of his bed and pulled the mattress off the frame, the sheets from the mattress. He pushed the frame against the far wall and relegating the bedding to the scrap heap he was building in the corner, then gingerly laid back down on the bare mattress. He’d gotten to know the height of his bed, gotten too familiar with the feeling of the sheets under his skin. Those things belonged to him now – to _him_ , not to anybody else.

He curled up again, one arm under his pillow and the other wrapped around his stomach, his fingers knotted in the dry cotton of the t-shirt. Not his shirt. Not his bed. Not his memories. Not his city. Not his scars.

Everybody had their pain; he wouldn’t be able to shed that. But he was sick of the old pain, all that fucking pain that he’d taken on because it belonged to him. If he could just find a way to leave it all in the past, then whatever came after would at least be...something new.

 

_“If he’s mad at me because I didn’t stop when he told me to– “_

_“He’s not mad at you, Ronon. He’s concerned.”_

_“Whatever. He could have said so to me. I don’t see why he had to take a chain of command problem to you. No offense.”_

_“I don’t think Colonel Sheppard views it as a chain of command problem.”_

_“I fucked up, okay? It happens. I’m not – nobody’s perfect. I don’t understand.... I never understood what he wants me to do about it. He won’t take my penance. He won’t punish me. He just...makes me...hold onto it. And then he waits, like he’s waiting for me to fix.... I was out of control. I wasn’t doing my job. I’m sorry for that, but I don’t know....”_

_“Have you tried telling him that? That you know it was a mistake?”_

_“We don’t...talk that much. That’s not how we do things.”_

 

Rodney couldn’t quite land a direct hit on the speed bag; his gloves kept catching it from the side, causing it to swing crazily in the wrong direction, which made it even harder to hit. A vicious cycle. “Okay, stop,” John said, coming up from behind. “All you’re doing is making it angry.”

“Don’t help,” Rodney said, but John noticed he seized the opportunity to give up on his semi-fruitless boxing in favor of going a few verbal rounds with his favorite target. John figured he and Rodney would always have sniping the way Bogie and Bacall had Paris, and he wasn’t exactly sure what to think about that. “I realize that not all of us have spent our entire adult lives perfecting the fine art of Hulk smash, but I’m only here to– “

“It’s not an art, it’s a science. The sweet one.”

Rodney snorted. “I lost ten years off my life suffering through your attempts to explain pool in terms of physics. You should get your money back from Hubcap State Community College– “

“That’d be the Air Force Academy?” John said mildly.

“– which certainly should have covered Newton’s laws of motion in their gen ed program, even for those of you who majored in cosmetology– “

“And that’d be geospatial sciences. Also, I can sink a pool ball and you can’t.”

“I can, too!”

“I guess just not when there are people in the room,” John said with the air of someone who was trying hard to offer the benefit of the doubt.

“Just not when _you_ – “ Rodney snapped his mouth shut so hard that John could almost hear the enamel of his teeth fracturing. “When you’re – hovering,” he finished sulkily. “With the commentary....” And his arm sliding across Rodney’s back, shifting his elbow, kicking his boots to change his stance, bringing his thigh closer to John’s body, breath and heat and contact and _getting away with it_ in a bar in Colorado Springs. Rodney had scratched every time, their beers had gotten warm, and they left early, walking a few casual paces apart through the summer twilight to their rental car....

Well, that was a long time ago. “Here, let me see your gloves,” John said, jerking Rodney’s arm toward him a little too abruptly, because on top of a room full of John’s own soldiers being a whole different kettle of fish from a bar full of strangers on a planet that was becoming increasingly alien to both of them, John and Rodney didn’t play those games anymore. _Bitter ex-boyfriend_ , John reminded himself firmly as he pulled off Rodney’s glove and re-wrapped his knuckles with quick, efficient hands and knots tied a little tighter than they had to be.

“Now,” he said when he was finished, “put that thing out of its misery.”

“I thought– “ Rodney said, and John took him by the shoulders and shoved him in the direction of the heavy bag. “Oh. No, I don’t know,” Rodney said, wide-eyed. “Shouldn’t I start with the little one?”

“Not if the point of coming here is to beat the crap out of something,” John said, slapping the vinyl side of the heavy bag invitingly. “This is the one that isn’t going to hit you back.”

Rodney dubiously between John and the bag. “I never said that was the point of– “

“Rodney, that’s why your guys always come down here. This right here is the gold-standard for working out your tension. Don’t be scared of it, just go ahead.”

“I don’t have tension,” Rodney said. John raised his eyebrows. “I have good tension!” Rodney clarified. “I have peak-performance tension, I have highly functional tension. I expressly encourage a certain amount of tension in my department, solely for its productivity benefits and– “

“That explains a hell of a lot about your department.”

Rodney shook his glove at John. Given the way Rodney communicated, putting him in boxing gloves was kind of like stuffing a wad of cottonballs in his mouth – you could still make some sense out of what he was saying, but all the nuances were lost. “Research and development operates at an almost unimaginably high level of organizational– “

“When’s the last time you got laid, Rodney?”

Under the circumstances, it might have been a little below the belt, but it was probably the only kind of tension Rodney even noticed anymore. Got his attention, anyway. He gaped angrily for a beat, and then narrowed his eyes and said, “More recently than you.”

And that was what made John an expert in the therapeutic benefits of beating the crap out of seventy pounds of nylon and vinyl hanging from the ceiling.

He was less skilled at ignoring the way that Rodney’s grunts when his fist connected with the bag sounded pretty much exactly like his grunts when he used to adjust his sweaty hands on John’s upper arms and thrust inside him. Had some work to do on that score.

 

_“Are you angry with Colonel Sheppard?”_

_“Why are you so sure I’m angry at somebody?”_

_“It’s not hard to see that you are.”_

_“Why, because I hit a Wraith?”_

_“Not only that.”_

_“I’m angry with the *Wraith.* That seems pretty normal to me.”_

_“To some degree, yes.”_

_If she’s trying to make sure he’s angry, it’s starting to work. “To some degree. So...I should be over it by now.”_

_“That’s not what I said.”_

_“Well, to what *degree* should I be angry? They killed my brothers, they killed my squadron, my two-year-old niece– “_

_“We’re not here for me to judge or invalidate your emotions, Ronon.”_

_“So why the fuck are we here? Can you just tell me that?” He waits for her to throw it back at him, to ask him why he came here. She doesn’t._

 

The knocking went on for quite a little while before Ronon focused in on it. He rolled to his side slowly and looked at the door, wondering if whoever it was would go away. The noise stopped, and he waited in the dark, cool silence; the sky was purple outside his window, late evening. It had been evening...not too long ago, and he couldn’t remember exactly where he’d been all day. Here...he guessed?

He got to his feet when the knocking started again – the same steady, persistent rhythm as before. That meant it wasn’t Sheppard, who would have come in already, or Rodney, who’d be making a lot more of a scene. He didn’t know who else it could possibly be.

“Oh, good, you are– “ Dr. Beckett stopped talking, blinking up at Ronon in something like – fear. Not fear of him, though, Ronon didn’t think. He knew what that looked like. “How are you, son?” he asked gently.

Ronon blinked. His jaw was stiff to open; his tongue felt thick and dry. “I’m okay,” he said.

Dr. Beckett held out a sack, which he reached to take automatically. When he unwrapped the open end, he could feel heat on his fingers and smell spices and salsa. “Nobody’s seen you in the dining room for a bit. I thought you might be hungry, so I had them wrap up some of this evening’s dinner – I’m afraid they were running low on meat, but they sent me with three of the tava enchiladas – and there’s an MRE in the bag as well, for later, if...if you need it.”

He was hungry. He hadn’t thought about it until he smelled the food. “Thanks,” he said, but that sounded brusque, like he didn’t really mean it, so he added, “Smells good.”

Beckett looked relieved by that somehow, and he smiled at Ronon. “Shall I have a look at your back while I’m here?”

He wasn’t sure he needed it, but if it saved him a trip to the infirmary, he was all for that. He sat down on his mattress and dug in for the enchiladas while Beckett leaned over him, pushing his hair aside and peeling back the bandage. He prodded the ends of the stitching lightly. “Does this hurt?”

“Not much,” Ronon said through that first wonderful mouthful of food. How long had it been since he’d eaten? He remembered it was breakfast, but maybe not this morning’s breakfast.

Beckett reattached the bandage and patted Ronon’s shoulder, gripping it heavily. “Be sure you call if you experience any discomfort at all,” he said a little weakly, like he didn’t really think Ronon would do it.

“Thanks,” he said again with his mouth full. “Oh. Hey, I have something for you.” He’d put two knives aside while he was going through his things, small ones with their own gindivi-hide sheaths. Beckett stared at them, but didn’t put his hands out to take them until Ronon rattled them impatiently in the sheaths. “You killed a Wraith,” he said, and Beckett’s face went an odd color. He looked unhappy; Ronon wasn’t sure why. He was trying to.... “It’s an honor. You don’t have to go unarmed now. It’s....” He could tell by Beckett’s face that he was saying something wrong, but he didn’t know how to back out.

“Thank you,” Beckett finally said, tucking them carefully against his forearm, hilts in the bend of his elbow. “It’s not necessary, but...it’s very kind.” He was lying. He wasn’t pleased by the gift at all. Ronon probably hadn’t explained it right.

But Beckett stayed a little longer, so he couldn’t have been too offended – standing with Ronon in the dark for what seemed like quite a while, his hand hot on Ronon’s shoulder. Ronon thought about asking the doc how Rodney was – Beckett was his friend, he’d probably know a lot. But then he felt sort of ashamed of thinking it was his right to ask, when he knew he wasn’t willing to do the most basic thing there was. Beckett would just say he should go see Rodney himself, and he’d be right about that.

Maybe it was having a hand on his skin for the first time in days that was making the quiet longing for Rodney flare up into something harder to live with, just like smelling food could make you hungry again when you’d gotten used to just feeling empty.

Beckett finally left him alone with another few pats to his shoulder. Ronon tucked the edges of the bag around the MRE and put it on the floor for later. 

 

_“My concern isn’t the time-frame of your anger. You’ll spend the rest of your life dealing with that. My concern is that sometimes an emotion as intense as anger begins to dictate your life. It can take over, the same way that weeds take over a garden. It can kill off other emotions, other experiences, that deserve to be there, too.”_

_“I have other emotions.”_

_“But they get mixed-up, don’t they?” It’s not a question. It’s something she knows. So he doesn’t bother to answer. “Sometimes you start to feel something different, and you find it turning into anger – into violence.”_

_Violence. He narrows his eyes at her, looking for the ghost of all those flinches and stuttering, surreptitious retreats that he got so used to back when he was a stranger here. “I wouldn’t hurt.... Is that why I’m here?”_

 

After Beckett’s food ran out, it took Ronon a long time to decide if he was hungry enough to go to the cafeteria, and even longer to decide what to wear. He’d been wearing the track pants Cadman gave him for a while, but he knew he’d attract attention if he left his room like that.

He put on a shirt, carefully not thinking about the fresh, raw skin coming in on his back or the bare space against his chest where his necklace used to hang. The leather pants he remembered being comfortably tight, hard against his skin like armor, felt slightly wrong, chafing oddly against his hipbones. He’d been this hungry before, but never this inactive at the same time, and he could see himself reverting to the rangy, angular body he remembered from years ago.

His whole life was running backwards, all of him sinking further and further into the past.

The wrist-guards were another small dilemma. He ran his thumb up and down the veins inside his wrist, remembering the way Rodney used to kiss that same spot, sucking hard enough to almost hurt as he went to his knees. Once Ronon asked what the fascination was – or maybe he didn’t ask, maybe Rodney just told him. _Because I’m the only one who sees it_ , he said, which made sense to Ronon. Same reason he liked to stay up all night watching Rodney sleep.

Reluctantly, he tied the wrist-guards on. They went on the long list of things Ronon didn’t really give a damn about – but Rodney didn’t. Not yet.

A few people looked in his direction in the hallways – more once he got to the cafeteria. Ronon tried not to look straight at any of them, so he was halfway through the line when he glanced up and saw Rodney at a table by the door with some other scientists, watching him.

He knew he shouldn’t watch back, but he had to anyway. Rodney’s talkative hands had gone still, his eyes big and – raw, showing everything from paranoia to resentment to desire all at once. Suddenly Ronon didn’t feel that hungry anymore, but he’d come all the way here, and anyway he knew that his body needed this. So he finished up in the serving line and found an empty table, hunching over his tray as if he were fixated on the food. After the first few bites, he put the fork down and started in with his fingers – faster, and it tended to keep people away.

Things like that didn’t work on Rodney, though. He didn’t come over right away, but Ronon was watching out of the corner of his eye and noticed right away when Rodney did stand up and move in his direction. Ronon lifted his head just enough to narrow his eyes and glare.

People usually backed away when he glared. Even Rodney. He stepped backwards so quickly he almost stumbled, and Ronon looked down at the last of his dinner so he wouldn’t have to look at the expression on Rodney’s face for much longer.

Well, Rodney would get over it. He’d probably go back to Sheppard, and that would be good for both of them. They made each other miserable, but the right kind of miserable, like having something to slam a dislocated shoulder against and force it back into place.

He finished eating, wiped his fingers on his pants, and left without looking over at Rodney’s table. He had to make himself so blind doing it, though, that he wasn’t sure which way he was moving at all, and he found himself lost a minute later, standing in one of Atlantis’s aesthetic but anonymous halls with no way to be sure which one.

He whirled and punched the smooth wall before the idea had fully unfolded in his mind, and it hurt, but not all that much. So he tried it again, harder, and the pain went all the way into his back, but he could still open and close his hand. Nothing broken. He pressed his palms against the wall and leaned his forehead between them, closing his eyes and trying to gain control of his quivering muscles.

This wasn’t how he meant it – this was never how he meant it to go. He thought he was...better. Healing. He thought there was something left of him to give; knowing Rodney wanted it was a big incentive to find that something. He wasn’t expecting to end up one more person in Rodney’s life who couldn’t let himself get close.

But he wasn’t better. There was blood everywhere, broken glass and fallen buildings and failure and bodies rotting unburied under a cold sun, and he didn’t think he could withstand anyone’s sympathy, one more fucking person who wanted to save him. 

Running made certain demands on him, body and mind, and so he’d become a Runner – strong, alert, aggressive, unrelenting, stripped clean of anything that didn’t help him survive one more day. There certainly hadn’t been any room for grief or regret, let alone time to remember the good things. Now he had eight years of all those things at once, and it was unbearable, too much loss and want and fear.

Atlantis made demands on him, too: Atlantis had asked him in a thousand different ways to stand up and carry on, to make something out of this life that was never supposed to be his. He just didn’t know...he just didn’t think he could do it this time. And he was pretty sure he couldn’t survive telling Rodney that – Rodney who never met the challenge he couldn’t rise to, looking at him with those disappointed eyes, calling him a coward – or worse, Rodney trying to kiss him, saying it was okay, believing in him anyway.

It was about as much as he could manage to push himself away from the wall, get his bearings, and get home to the half-dark room where nothing shared the space with him except his unquiet dead.

 

_“You’ve shot Colonel Sheppard twice since you came to Atlantis.”_

_“Well, three times. But – the first two, it – I was trying to help him.”_

_“I understand that.”_

_“And then– He’s mad about the other time?” That doesn’t sound like Sheppard. He usually gets it. “It wasn’t – I didn’t know I was doing it. I mean, it was– “_

_“Please don’t put words in my mouth, Ronon. I never said that he was mad about anything.”_

_“I was drugged.”_

_“We all know that. Ronon, no one is blaming you.”_

_“Then why’d you even bring it up?”_

_“I’d like to understand your mental state at the time.”_

_“I was *drugged.*”_

_“And you believed Colonel Sheppard to be a threat to Atlantis?”_

_“No. Yes – he stole a Jumper.”_

_“You thought he would use it to attack the city?”_

_“I don’t...I don’t know.” Everything from that day is a blur. He’s just as glad. “I don’t remember what I was thinking. No, I didn’t – I mean, I knew he wasn’t going to shoot anyone. He was running away.”_

_“He deserted you. Is that what made you angry?”_

_“No. I wasn’t angry. I was bringing him back, like I was told to.”_

_“You didn’t feel– “_

_“I wasn’t angry!”_

_She twitches away from his voice. She stops looking him in the eye. He used to see that all the time, but it’s been a while._

 

There wasn’t much to do on third shift, unless one of the off-world teams came through in trouble, and John was surprised to realize how few teams other than his ever seemed to have any problems.

Now that John wasn’t in the field much, he thought it would be good for morale if he sent some people on leave and ran the floor himself for a while, but he hadn’t banked on how boring third shift was. It was making him cranky, which probably undid all the goodwill he was theoretically earning by filling in for Sgts. Coughlin and Vittorio.

It had been three nights, and he’d seen the lights on in Rodney’s office every night. He had a clear view of it from the control center, where he spent most of his time between patrols trying to translate the buttons and making the technicians inexplicably nervous. It was one of the perils of leadership; people sometimes suspected you of checking up on their work, even if they were outside your direct command, even if you barely knew what it was they did for a living.

Rodney came and went a lot from his office – down to the labs and back, John guessed, at the rate of a location shift every couple of hours. It was embarrassing that John knew that, but in his defense, there wasn’t that much else to watch; Atlantis hadn’t been in crunch-time for a while, and most of the civilians had settled into a normalized routine while they worked on non-death-defying research, complete with full nights of sleep and even the occasional social life.

He didn’t bother Rodney and Rodney didn’t bother him, but when Rodney came out of his office and walked right past John on the mezzanine without so much as a nod – well, that was just plain rude. After a minute to make up his mind, John cut his patrol short and traced Rodney’s path to the transporter.

The laboratory hub looked weirdly abandoned, its only motion the gently scrolling screensavers and the bare flutter of papers stacked under one of the air vents. Rodney was pulling his own computer out of sleep-mode, facing one of the window panels that looked into a smaller darkened lab, so that Rodney and John were both reflected clearly in it. “What do you want?” Rodney said, more resigned than actively irritated.

John shifted the weapon on his hip behind him and pulled a chair close to Rodney’s, straddling it backwards to give himself something to lean on. “Figured you must be onto something fascinating,” he said. “Working all hours like this.”

“It’s only fascinating to a specialist,” he said.

“So no superweapons?”

With a spectacular eye-roll, Rodney pushed his chair away from the desk so he could look John in the eye. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. “I’m taking a brief vacation from the all-important job of adding to intergalactic nuclear proliferation in order to investigate the apparently accelerated aging process of a certain class of star found much more commonly in Pegasus than in the Milky Way. It’s all terribly dull and non-lethal, just like I vaguely remember from the halcyon days of my youth. It is, however, my job, so– “

“What for?” John said, bringing Rodney up short. “What are you trying to learn?”

Rodney looked suspicious for a minute, but then seemed to give it up. “Nothing earth-shattering,” he said, turning back toward his computer. “It has some implications for the age of the universe, but it’s only significant on...the kind of scale that you work with, if you have an interest in the age of the universe. Nobody in our galaxy has enough data to do it, though. Which means it’ll be buried for security reasons for the next decade at least, but it’s...something only we can do, so that’s what we do.”

“Cool,” John said. Rodney snorted, but John meant it. The age of the universe – that was the big league. Mysteries-of-life kind of stuff. It was cool that Rodney did that sort of thing for a living, back before Atlantis turned him into the Indiana Jones of astrophysics.

Rodney made the attempt to get back to work, but it didn’t last very long. “Will you stop breathing down my neck?” he said, exasperated.

“I’m not saying anything!” John protested.

“I am not having sex with you.”

“Nobody _asked_ you to. Jesus.” He felt vaguely like he should be annoyed, only what he really felt was...disappointed. Not about the sex thing (which wasn’t even what he was thinking about), but just that Rodney couldn’t think of any reason John would be coming around him at all anymore if not for that. Obviously the “let’s be friends” thing wasn’t moving at a very good clip.

Rodney’s eyes were red and shadowed underneath, like he hadn’t slept in days, which come to think of it, his nocturnal schedule made not that improbable. “Are you tired?” John asked.

He laughed shortly and unpleasantly. “I’m on the far side of tired. I can’t – I can’t sleep, lately. And I fucking miss you, which I hate, you don’t even know how much I hate that part of me....”

It wasn’t a great idea in anyone’s book, but John found himself reaching out – and then found himself awkwardly unsure what to do with his hand. He settled for curling his fingers lightly in Rodney’s shirt, over his stomach. Rodney looked down in surprise, then up at John’s face. Slowly, he folded down so that his head rested not quite comfortably on John’s shoulder. John braced his arm on the back of Rodney’s chair, because there were still a million lines not to cross, and it seemed like rubbing Rodney’s back might be one of them. “It’s okay,” he said roughly.

“Have...you seen him?” It sounded like it cost Rodney something to ask that; John would’ve been stunned if Rodney knew what answer he was hoping for.

“In the halls once or twice,” John said. “The cafeteria. You know, it’s – it’s not – this happens sometimes, Rodney. Sometimes guys seem fine in the field, they’re coping, and then when they get home they kind of crash for a while. He just needs to recharge, that’s all.”

“Really? You’re sure?” Rodney said dubiously into his jacket.

“Absolutely,” John lied.

“And that’s different from a nervous breakdown how, exactly? Never mind,” he said when John didn’t know how to answer. “Are you sure you can’t just...order him to get back to normal? He’s so odd about that kind of thing....”

“I don’t think it works that way.”

Rodney’s neck looked strained with the effort of not leaning too heavily into John, like it didn’t count if he didn’t make John take his weight. “Is this okay?” he said hoarsely. “Does this bother you? I know how you can be about your personal space.”

John almost shrugged, then stopped when he realized it would come off like he was trying to shake Rodney loose. “Eh, it’s okay,” he said. He didn’t feel like explaining that personal space stopped being much of an issue for him once he’d slept with somebody. Once you’d surrendered that much personal space to another person, there wasn’t much point in sweating the details. He doubted Rodney would follow that logic – Rodney, who’d still taken his boxers off under the covers after they’d been fucking for a year – so he didn’t bother. Anyway, it wasn’t like they could go on like this for too much longer, not in a perfectly open lab, so....

So take it for what it is, John told himself. Let it just...be what it is.

He rubbed Rodney’s arm briefly when Rodney pulled away, then left the lab silently. Rodney didn’t say anything either. John might have turned around to see if he was watching, if he wasn’t afraid of getting busted by his reflection in the dark window. 

 

_“You’re scared of me,” he says._

_“Not...consciously,” she says, with an embarrassed little smile._

_If she can smile at him, it’s not so bad. He relaxes a little, but he still says, “You said I was violent.”_

_“Are you?”_

_“Not all the time. Not everything turns into...that.”_

_“So tell me about something that doesn’t. Tell me something you like about Atlantis – something here that makes you feel good.” It’s not like there aren’t things, but there’s nothing that’s his own to talk about. So he doesn’t say anything. “Anything you want to say is okay, Ronon. I took an oath that means that when I’m talking to someone like this, I can’t ever repeat anything they say without their permission. So it’s perfectly safe here.”_

_Nowhere is perfectly safe. But then, this hasn’t been a secret for quite a while. “I like McKay.”_

_“You can say more,” she says gently. “It’s all right.”_

_“I like– He does that thing, like you were talking about. He gets upset all the time, but just...to a degree. He gets mad or scared or upset for a little while, and then he...quits. And the next time you see him, he’s happy again. Excited about something. He’s like a little kid, you know? Everything is new all the time, and the weather just – changes.”_

_“Sounds unpredictable. Doesn’t that frustrate you?”_

_Right now, he thinks it might be keeping him alive. “Not really. I like it.”_

_“How long has it been since you’ve spoken to Rodney?”_

_Three weeks, two days, and eighteen hours._

_“I don’t know. A little while.”_

 

John wasn’t sure what made him go to Ronon’s quarters that day, when he hadn’t gone for a week or more before that. He’d promised Ronon time, and time was pretty much all he had to offer, so he figured he better come through on it.

He definitely wasn’t going for Rodney, because he couldn’t possibly still be so whipped that he’d do something like this just so Rodney McKay could have his boyfriend back – the boyfriend he wanted, the fully loaded model, the bleeding-edge in boyfriend technology. John didn’t care how many times Rodney gave him the my-world-is-crumbling eyes.

He didn’t waste his time knocking; Ronon never answered. John opened the door and stepped right through it, into the sight-line of Ronon’s gun. “This is becoming a bad habit,” he said, letting the door close behind him.

“Go away,” Ronon said hoarsely, still holding the gun stretched out toward John. The weight of it seemed to pull his arm downward in little tics, but he kept readjusting, aiming center-mass.

“You don’t scare me, you know,” John said, stepping closer. “You’re not gonna shoot me.”

“Stop. Don’t come any closer.” John stopped because of the way Ronon’s voice cracked, not what he was saying. All of John’s trouble-seeking instincts were awake and rattling, because this was – wrong, this wasn’t what should be happening here at all. “I don’t want you...” Ronon said, his voice just a little higher than normal. He stopped, swallowed, and tried again in his old growl, “I don’t want you here, I told you that.”

John took one cautious step forward and held out his hand. “Let me have that, okay? You’re not thinking straight– “

All at once, Ronon was up off the bed and moving toward him; John found himself thrown back against the wall with the wide barrel of Ronon’s gun pressed into the soft underside of his jaw, forcing his head back. Ronon’s tongue slid out across his lip as he smiled that hello-nice-to-kill-you smile that John hadn’t seen aimed in his direction for quite some time. “Be scared of me,” he rasped.

John raised his hand slowly and wrapped it around the barrel of the gun. He gave an experimental push, dislodging the gun slightly from his throat, but Ronon wasn’t letting him push it down entirely. “It’s gonna be like this?” John said, trying for the same mix of stern and protective that used to scare the shit out of him when his father used it. “Is this how it ends between us?”

This close, it was easier to see the stress fractures: doubt flickering in his eyes, the uncharacteristic quiver in his gun hand. Still holding the barrel of the gun, John raised his other hand and settled it over Ronon’s, feeling the tension there. “You’d never forgive yourself,” John said quietly. “Hell, you never forgave yourself for the first time. You think you could live with this?” Almost, almost. John could feel the way his arm wanted to fall, see how his eyes wanted to close and let John be the one to guide this moment where it had to go.

His hand jumped just enough to make John’s heart stop for a moment – but he was shaking, his fingers lax on the trigger. He let John push the gun away, then stepped back and said, “Just go. Just...you have to go.”

John took a quarter of a second to catch his breath, then straightened up away from the wall’s support and said, “‘Fraid I can’t do that.”

“I don’t want to see you.”

“I’m clear on that,” John said, starting to get annoyed. “But if you think I’m going to leave you alone to sit in the dark and get friendly with your fucking gun, you can forget it. I’ve lost friends this way before.” And one of the first things he’d promised himself when he took command of Atlantis was that it wouldn’t happen here.

“Am I your friend?” Ronon asked, so flatly that John wasn’t sure if it was a question or a pointed comment.

“How have I not been your friend?” John demanded, obscurely stung. “What haven’t I done for you since the first day we met?”

Ronon backed against a different wall, alongside the tall, shaded windows, cradling the gun awkwardly against his stomach. “Get out, Sheppard. This has nothing to do with you.”

“I’m your fucking commander.”

“I don’t care! You don’t know what this is like, you came here because you wanted to! You decided. This is _my_ decision.”

John’s vision shifted abruptly and his rising anger plateaued off. Christ, he forgot sometimes. Nineteen years old when he lost all contact with the human race, Ronon was a cooler, more seasoned killer than any teenage boy John had served in the field with, but at the end of the day, he’d never been given a chance to finish growing up. He could have been John himself at nineteen, with all of that anger at the world and all that fear that things could never possibly get better than they were.

Among the things John had going for him back then were a couple of pretty great CO’s, the kind who wouldn’t let him get away with shit until he was ready to quit being quite so full of shit on his own. Doing his best to channel all of them at once, John said, “You are part of my team and you’re part of this mission. It’s not only your life and you don’t get to decide. Get over it.”

Ronon narrowed his eyes, flashing that bloodthirsty smile. “There’s nothing you could do to stop me.”

John narrowed his eyes back, but kept his smile lazy. “Granted, but I can tell you what I will do. You blow your head off, and I’m getting Rodney in here to pick the pieces of your skull out of the carpet.” Even as little as John was enjoying any of this, he had to admit the look of shock in Ronon’s eyes was strangely satisfying. Touchdown. “Yeah,” John said, warming to his topic, “I’ll explain to him that it’s the ancient and honorable custom of your people that a dead body has to be prepared for burial by the next of kin or you don’t pass Go and collect your happy afterlife, and because you loved him _so fucking much_ , he’s the only one who can do it for you. So every time it crosses your mind that it might be easier for you if you were dead, I want you to think about Rodney, up to his elbows in your blood– “

“Shut up,” Ronon said raggedly. “Shut up.”

“– down on his hands and knees sponging your brains off– “

“ _Stop._ You wouldn’t – tell him that. I don’t believe you’d do it. You care about him too much.”

“And I don’t believe you want to test that theory,” John said. “I care about you too much to let you pretend that what you do doesn’t affect everyone around you.”

Ronon lowered himself a little shakily to sit on the edge of his mattress, dropping the gun at the foot. “I could stay in control before,” he said thickly, hunching over his knees, “but only when I couldn’t remember – when I didn’t think. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why I’m so.... I can’t stop thinking about it now. I’ve tried. I swear I’ve tried.”

For one strange minute, the dark cave of a room shifted in front of John to that stark, too-quiet dining hall with the high ceilings and the portraits of dour men in uniform all over the walls – and he’d felt so small, sitting on the bench by himself at two hours past lights-out, with the assistant superintendent and his football coach and the cadet Commandant talking in hushed voices just outside his hearing – and he could hear Colonel Rainville say _very quickly, with no pain_ and _everything’s been arranged_ and _I’m sorry, son_ , and he remembered saying _Can I talk to my father?_ but really thinking that he didn’t have a home now, not just temporarily, not just til he was old enough to leave this place and go to Germany where she was, but forever. He remembered the chocolate pie they brought him from the kitchens, and how he’d forced himself to swallow it because he wasn’t ungrateful for the gesture; since then, he usually just remembered that he hated chocolate pie, without letting himself think too hard about why that was.

Christ, it had taken John twenty-three years to believe he’d ever have anywhere to go home to again. He wasn’t exactly in the best position to order Ronon to get there faster.

“I know you have,” John said, hearing Colonel Rainville’s steady kindness in his own voice. “And you’ll keep trying.”

Ronon put his face down against his knees as his hard, shallow breathing sped up, turning into painful gasps, and then into helpless, choked sobs. John remembered that part, too.

 

_“That seems strange to me. He’s the first thing you brought up when I asked you what you liked here in Atlantis. Are you fighting with him?”_

_“No.”_

_“It’s okay if you are. People get angry even with people they love. It doesn’t mean what you feel about him isn’t– “_

_“I’m not *angry* with him. You keep saying that. I’m not angry.”_

_“Rodney can be abrasive. He has poor personal boundaries, and his lack of tact can– “_

_“Why are you telling me this like I don’t know him? I know all that. I didn’t say he’s never gotten on my nerves before, but I’m not mad at him right now.”_

_“You’re still involved with him? Romantically?”_

_“I.... Yeah. I guess I am.” He hasn’t heard differently, at least._

_“Have you seen him since you came back to Atlantis?”_

_“No.”_

_“He almost lost you. Don’t you think he deserves– “_

_“I never said he didn’t, it’s not about that. It’s not about what he deserves.”_

_“No, it isn’t. So why don’t you tell me why you think this is what you deserve.”_

 

He woke up to a soft hand on his shoulder and fingers on his forehead – small hands, a woman’s hands. He knew they weren’t Malena’s (so many years had made her death more real than her life; even in his dreams, she was a corpse), but if he didn’t open his eyes, this could be what he would’ve had. The life he’d planned out: a good post, a pension, a wife who gentled him awake from heavy, easy sleep.

She spoke a word that sounded foreign; English still did in the moments just before sleep and just after waking, the sounds of it slipping through his mind, resistant to meaning. He repeated it inside his head: _bashkamar_ – not English. The translation drifted up to his consciousness, but with that stutter-scratch that words carried when the match was imperfect. Grief, loneliness...but not. Despair, but different. The Athosians were known as a solid, stoic people, faintly grim even in their celebrations; it didn’t surprise him that they had too many words for sadness.

Another voice, farther away. He recognized it as Sheppard’s, even though the words themselves passed over him harmlessly.

“As much as it is in my power to do,” Teyla said in reply. “I have held my peace, John, no one can say that I have interfered. But this – I do not understand how can you let him suffer this way, knowing what one kind word from you would mean.”

“I know you don’t,” Sheppard said, sounding tired. “But can you trust me? He doesn’t need his commanding officer right now.”

“You are so much more to him than– “

“Please,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “Don’t. I know what I am.”

Her hair brushed Ronon’s face and he reached up to push it away without thinking, and then of course he couldn’t get away with pretending anymore. He opened his eyes as Teyla curled her hand against his face, looking down at him with enough tenderness to steal his breath. Uncertainly, he put a hand up and let her press her free hand against it, sinking her fingers between his. In a voice so low and fluid that it was almost more melody than speech, she said, “Your life is a gift.”

“I know,” he whispered back. Years and years of last-second escapes and not-quite-fatal injuries, the million little breaks he’d gotten, the million little mishaps that befell his enemies. No one was that lucky and no one was that strong. He was alive because he’d been granted his life somehow, when so many others hadn’t. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“I should have said that to you much sooner,” she said. “Forgive me, my friend.”

She convinced him to sit up with gentle, wordless murmurs and touches and then disappeared into his bathroom to start a shower running, which Ronon figured he desperately needed by now. That left him alone in the room with Sheppard, who was leaning by the door with his arms folded across his chest. “You called Teyla?” Ronon said, still falling a little bit short of fully alert.

Sheppard nodded. “Trick of the trade. My first command was in Nicaragua, and I had a guy flip out on me there, too. He had a short leave coming up, and I bought the tickets for his girlfriend to meet him in Mexico for a few days. Pretty basic, but it works nine times out of ten. You should remember that for someday when you’re the one in charge.”

He didn’t bring up how unlikely that scenario sounded right now. “Teyla,” he said slowly, “but not McKay.”

“Women are good at that stuff; Rodney sucks at it. Besides, I figured if you wanted to see him, you’d have called him yourself by now.”

“Don’t,” Ronon said. “I don’t...want him to see me this way.”

“I figured,” Sheppard said.

“Sheppard – swear. Give me your word you won’t bring him in here – make me see him– “

“When you say it’s okay,” Sheppard said. “Not before that. I swear.”

 

_“Now you’re saying I’m angry at me.”_

_“Are you?”_

_“Do I not get to leave here until I pick someone to be mad at? Because if you just say that, I’ll find someone.”_

_“Rodney gets on your nerves sometimes.”_

_“Yeah, sometimes.”_

_“Have you ever wanted to hurt him?”_

_“What? No, I – not seriously, no. I love him. I *protect* him.”_

_“What about Colonel Sheppard?”_

_“What about him?”_

_“Do you sometimes want to hurt him?”_

_“No! I wouldn’t – I’m not like that. Look, I lose my temper sometimes, I don’t have much patience, and I don’t, maybe I’m not good at letting go of some things, but I’m not– I wouldn’t hurt my friends.”_

_“But you would hurt yourself.” He doesn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t long ago when he couldn’t have imagined..... But it was long enough. “Wouldn’t you, Ronon?”_

 

“He’s okay,” John said flatly, scuffing the eraser on his pencil against the conference table. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him without even looking up, worried and disapproving. “Fine, he’s not _okay_ ,” John corrected impatiently. “But he will be. He’s working on it.”

“Still,” Elizabeth said, “I’d feel better if I heard that from Dr. Heightmeyer.”

John tried not to roll his eyes. “We’ll get to that,” he promised. “Right now he’s just – he’s not there yet. He’s not at the talking-about-it stage.”

“Or the eating stage, or the getting-out-of-bed stage?” Rodney said, and it was almost his regular I-hate-this-meeting voice. Just the slightest bit more shrill than normal. “With your vast expertise in psychiatry, Colonel, do you think you could tell us what _stage_ , exactly, he’s– “

“Go to hell, McKay,” John snapped, and then kept talking right over Elizabeth’s studiously soothing attempts at professionalism. “You think you know more about PTSD than I do? _Go to hell._ ”

“John!” Elizabeth said, louder this time. “Rodney’s only expressing a very reasonable concern– “

“Fine,” he said, forcibly smoothing out the rough edges of his mood. If he wasn’t so fucking tired, he wouldn’t have said that anyway. “Right. I’m sorry.”

“I think we’d all feel better if we had a more detailed understanding of how you...envision the treatment process,” Elizabeth said.

First of all, not like a _treatment process_. This was exactly why he’d gone to Teyla before anyone else: she was the only person so far who hadn’t reacted like there was a handbook to consult – the only one who was still able to treat Ronon like he was _Ronon_ and not a patient. The fact that Teyla was with him right now was the only reason John could sit here in a goddamn staff meeting and keep his cool at all. “He’s.... I don’t know what to tell you, Elizabeth. He’s grieving. He never had time to do that before, so it all just got bottled up, and now that’s what he’s doing. I don’t think – I mean, it’s not fun, I guess it’s not good, but I don’t think it’s that...bad. I think it’s normal. He’ll feel better before long, and I’ll have him see Heightmeyer, and it’ll – you know, work out. It’ll work out. Everyone’s worrying about it too much; just give him some time.”

After a heavy, dubious silence, Beckett finally said, “I think that’s sensible enough. I was deeply concerned when he was isolating himself, but if he’s comfortable having Teyla and Colonel Sheppard for company, then that’s an excellent sign and probably very therapeutic. It sounds to me like the situation is coming along, and we’re as likely to do harm as good by interfering now.”

“All right, then,” Elizabeth said slowly. “We’ll just be looking for an update when you have more news. My only stipulation is that he not be left alone until Dr. Heightmeyer has had her chance to talk with him.” John nodded. 

Rodney had one more stipulation.

He darted into John’s transport before John could find a way to block the door. “How come you don’t move that fast when we’re on missions?” John grumbled.

“I’m perfectly fast,” Rodney said. “Being the slowest person on the team only has meaning inasmuch as the definition of– “

“No,” John said as the door closed, “you can’t come.”

“The hell I can’t. I’m thoroughly sick of– “

“As if I care how _you_ feel about it – as if this was about you at all.”

“Oh, and it somehow has more to do with you?” Rodney said, folding his arms across his chest.

“It’s my job, this is my responsibility– “

“It’s not your _anything_ , you’re the one who wanted nothing to do with us– “

“ _That’s not how it_ – Christ!” He smacked the wall with his palm, which stung enough to make him lose his train of thought. He tried to shake it out surreptitiously, behind his back, but of course Rodney noticed and smirked nastily at him. “How is it possible that you know as little about men as you do about women?” John growled.

“What could that possibly have to do with any– “

“He’s ashamed, Rodney. He wants you to look at him like he’s a hero, how are you not getting that? The last thing he wants right now is your pity.”

“ _Pity?_ I don’t _pity_ him, I – it’s, it’s – well, I feel _sorry_ for him, obviously, everybody feels _sorry_ – “

“I don’t,” John said. “Teyla doesn’t.” Which was a slight exaggeration, but John didn’t think he had the words to explain the nuances to a – civilian, to an outsider – how when everything was crumbling around you, you could always tell who was watching it like an unfolding tragedy and who was _there_ , who was with you every step of the way, because they knew what being broken felt like. Rodney had his highs and lows – Rodney’s life was nothing but highs and lows – but John had never seen him break. He’d never seen him come close.

“That’s great, that’s truly glorious,” Rodney said. “I have too much sympathy, I’m overflowing with the milk of human kindness for once in my life, and who does he want to see? His repressed, emotionally alienated drill sergeant. That, he finds comforting. Clearly if I’d been planning ahead, I would have taken pains to care about his well-being a lot less.”

John wished he’d threatened to visit bodily harm on Rodney less frequently in the past, because this time he _really meant it_ , this time he would have paid good money and served his time in the brig for ninety seconds to wrap his hands around Rodney’s neck and squeeze. “Right,” he said when he could loosen his throat enough to speak. “Yeah, it’s pretty handy, not caring and all.”

There must have been something on his face, something in his eyes, because Rodney looked suddenly smaller, awkward and hangdog like he got when he knew he’d crossed a line, but couldn’t figure out how to get himself back on the right side of it. “I know you – yes, sarcasm, because – I know, I know, but I’m not thinking straight, I’m obviously not myself right now.”

“Well, whoever you are,” John said as the transporter door opened on Ronon’s hallway, “you’re not invited.” Instead of following him outside, Rodney slumped against the transporter wall. John wasn’t used to seeing Rodney give up on anything once he had his mind made up about it; he felt just bad enough about seeing it now to say, “Look, it won’t be long. He’ll be asking to see you any day.”

The transporter door closed between them before John could figure out from Rodney’s face if he’d even heard him or not.

 

_“Why is that easier than hurting one of your friends?”_

_“You think it’s easy?”_

_“Sometimes people who have been victims of a crime feel like there’s some kind of flaw in them. Like they were chosen because the perpetrator could see something about them that other people don’t see.” That’s not a question. He doesn’t know what she’s waiting for him to say. “Don’t you ever wonder why the Wraith chose you?”_

_“No. It wouldn’t matter.”_

_“You’ve been acting that way for a while now.”_

_“What way?”_

_“Like things don’t matter. Colonel Sheppard says you’ve been getting rid of your belongings.”_

_“Things are just...things. They don’t matter. You can keep them, but what’s the point?”_

_“What about people?”_

_“Them you can’t keep.”_

 

Teyla didn’t make him talk. She made him take a shower and eat and put blankets and pillows back on his bed, but that was it.

She talked about him, when Sheppard came back. They stood on the other side of the room, close together with Sheppard’s arm braced on the wall by Teyla’s shoulder and his head lowered over hers while they talked in low, voiceless murmurs. Ronon could hear them, but if he tried to make his mind go blank, he could make himself invulnerable to the words. He just laid there, looking at his seamless ceiling, with the warm patches on its gray surface where the lamplight reflected.

Sheppard’s voice startled him, out loud and right beside him. “Hey, turn over,” he said, and Ronon did it without thinking, rolling so that his arms were under the pillow and his face against it. Sheppard brushed aside his hair and touched the fresh scar on his back with two fingertips. “Hurt?” he asked.

“A little,” Ronon said. “Not really.”

Sheppard’s nails brushed his spine as he moved his hand away. Ronon closed his eyes and breathed into the pillow. “I’ll come by in the morning,” Sheppard said. “Maybe you’ll feel like going for breakfast, huh?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ronon murmured.

He rolled over onto his back again when Teyla turned out the light. She laid down next to him on her side, on top of the covers and with her head on his shoulder. He was fleetingly aware that he was naked underneath his blanket, but he couldn’t make himself feel any more self-conscious than he did in the barracks showers. On Sateda female soldiers served in their own separate units, so Ronon had never had a woman for a squad-mate before; he found it impossible to think of Teyla as both at the same time, so he’d fallen into the habit of ignoring the first part, a habit that was impossible to shake now.

“Shall I tell you a story?” she murmured with that chuckle in her voice. 

“Sure,” he said, sleepy and thick-voiced. “As long as it doesn’t have a happy ending. Not really in the mood for that.”

“A sad story,” she mused. “I do know one of those. Do you know of a world called Demardus?”

He thought about that for a while. “Maybe? Sounds familiar.”

“There is little reason you should know it. Once it was a great and civilized world, as free and wealthy as any, but it fell years ago – oh, before you were even born, my friend.”

“To the Wraith?” he said, a little wistfully. So many stories ended that way....

But Teyla said, “No, not especially. For the most part, Demardus was destroyed by civil war – a military coup against the Demardians’ elected leader. It was a religious war, in large part. Many had grown suspicious of the control that the temple priestesses wielded, and they began to believe that the Minister was an empty shell, a toy of the priestesses. Others knew better, but coveted power they could not win fairly. It was a bloody war; in three months, three thousand died in the streets of their great city. The usurping forces won, but there was little left to rule on Demardus. The highest-ranked of the temple priestesses were executed publically along with the Minister, and those of less importance were handed over to their enemies; many were raped, nearly all were tortured. Their mutilated faces and bodies were shown to the people as signs that no true divine power protected them. Some few escaped; it had been the task of the temple priestesses to host off-world visitors, and many of them had friends on other planets who could grant them aid and refuge. I have heard that the Wraith arrived shortly after the war and culled most of the survivors, leaving nothing but ruins on Demardus.”

Like Sateda, then. “So you’re telling me it could be worse,” he said. “At least I have someone to hate. Other than...people.”

“No,” Teyla said slowly, “although if that idea gives you comfort, so be it. I am telling you this story only because.... My mother wore her scars where all could see. It was impossible for anyone to forget where she had been, where she came from. But I look at you....” She ran her hand over his beard, and he turned his head to look at her soft smile in the darkness. “You are so remarkably beautiful. It is your misfortune, I sometimes think. Even those of us who should be wiser can forget that a man so nearly flawless on the outside can be bleeding to death within.”

“You’re Demardian?”

Her smile widened, but even in the dark he could tell it was a sad smile. “By the laws of my mother’s people, yes – were there any of my mother’s people left to care. The child of a temple priestess was held to have no human father, belonging to the temple itself. But I bear more than a passing resemblance to my father – I am smaller and darker than any other Athosian, of course, but no one could deny whose daughter I was. He took my mother and me into his home when I was not yet two years old. He was kind to her, though I think he did not love her. He loved me...very much. When I was a little girl, there were those among my people who were frightened by my mother – the way she looked, the strange way she spoke. But they treated her respectfully, at first because my father was a powerful man, and eventually because they came to know her; she was deeply grieved when she was culled. As for me, I think it has been many years since my people thought of me as anything but Tegan’s child.”

“You think someday people will think of you like you were always from Atlantis?” Once it would have seemed like a stupid question, but there was that moment – Sheppard holding his gun in his hand, offering it to him, and for just a minute he thought he was...something other than an alien in this city that he saw the way Teyla saw him: beautiful on the outside, bloody underneath. Maybe Teyla had moments like that, too, sometimes.

She hummed a little laugh against his shoulder. “No,” she said, “I do not think so. But many years from now, I think there will be few who remember that you were ever anything but what you are becoming, even now.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he said, feeling himself smile for no sure reason.

“You will,” she promised.

 

_“You killed the Wraith who arranged your abduction.”_

_“Sort of. Yeah.” It was because of him, anyway. That’s enough._

_“How do you feel about that?”_

_“It’s not like I thought it would be.”_

_“What’s it like?”_

_“Just.... It never stops. There’s more Wraith. More people die. I thought this would be some kind of...some kind of ending, and it’s not. I’m never going to get there.”_

_“Get where?”_

_“Get...*anywhere.* It’s just running to stay a little bit ahead. I used to think there was somewhere to get to, but there’s not, really. I’ve been waiting all my life to start my real life, but it’s never going to happen. This is what there is. This is my life.”_

_She’s quiet for a while, and then she says, “I asked you before if you were happy. You never really answered.”_

_“Nothing’s like I pictured it. I wanted...something different.”_

 

Teyla read him the riot act that night, all narrowed eyes and stern, soft voice. “You struggle to save him,” she said, “and yet you will not do the thing that might. I have never understood that, John.”

He touched the copper patterns on the door and looked at the dark, blank wall and said, “If anything happened to him....” He thought he could – say more than that, at least to Teyla, whose picture was in the dictionary under _nonjudgmental_. He thought he could just say it this time, if only in the dark while Ronon slept, but at the last minute he found out he had shit for follow-through.

“Is it so impossible?” she asked, almost wistfully. “There are such marriages, on some worlds– “

John shook his head. “It’s totally fucking impossible,” he said, and it would’ve made a stronger statement if his voice hadn’t cracked a bit in the middle. “The people who forgave me for being Atlantis’s favorite gay uncle when I was supposed to be James fucking Kirk – they won’t – he’s too much younger than me, he’s too good-looking. If I fall for Rodney, that’s one thing. People forgive you for falling in love – mostly, they do. Ronon makes it gay porn. Ronon makes it kinky. It’s not the same thing.”

“But it is the same,” she said, maddeningly reasonable. “The love you have for– “

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” he said. “Perception is reality. There’s a certain perception– Every man on this base has his favorite threesome fantasy, and there’s maybe one in a hundred of them where it has one damn thing to do with love. They won’t see.... At worst, it could change the way the whole base looks at me, and that’s unacceptable.”

“And at best?”

“At best....” John tried not to spend too much time dwelling on best-case scenarios. He’d been happier during the first twenty-five years of his adulthood, when he’d just assumed that no one would ever be satisfied with his half-measures, with the way he’d only ever been able to give away some of himself. “What do you want me to say? At best I get Rodney as much as he can stand me, Ronon for all the things he needs from me, and they get each other for everything else. At best it’s fucking paradise. And then I wake up, and none of us live in paradise.”

“Perhaps we are meant to be one another’s paradise,” Teyla said softly, looking down at Ronon.

“It’s not – it’s not as easy as you want to make it,” John said. “I can’t just...kiss him and make it all better. Christ, he told me once that makes it worse.”

“You are his elder, and his superior,” she said, with a hint of impatience. “You are the one who should know better. Would you leave a wound uncauterized or a bone unset if a less experienced soldier told you he feared the pain of treatment?”

And maybe he wouldn’t. But then, he was a better medic than he was a lover. He was a better almost everything than he was a lover, and in spite of what Ronon seemed to think, an officer’s commission didn’t equip anybody to hold together someone else’s broken heart. Maybe the qualifying exams were a whole hell of a lot different on Sateda, but nobody had ever bothered to teach John anything about this.

 

_“What did you want? What does ‘real life’ look like to you?”_

_“I don’t know. Buy some land. Grow some stuff. I wanted to get married. I always.... I always wanted that. My oldest brother got married just before I enlisted. He seemed really happy.”_

_“What was your parents’ marriage like? Were they married?”_

_“Yeah, they were, but I don’t know what it was like. She died. She died having me. My brothers talked about her sometimes, but I don’t remember my father ever doing it. I think he loved her. I mean...it seemed like he missed her. Have you ever been married?”_

_She’s surprised to be on the other end of a question, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. “Me? No. I was engaged once, but I broke it off. Have you?”_

_“I wasn’t allowed. Hard service, you can’t. You have to...wait. You’re always waiting. And everybody knows a girl who says she’ll.... But they get tired of it. They want to start their lives, too, so they find someone who’s not a soldier. I knew a lot of guys who got their hearts broken that way.”_

_“Were you one of them?”_

_“I didn’t want to be one of them. It was supposed to be different for us.”_

_He’s never been one to fall in love the same way everyone else does._

 

New nightmares were rare: hive ships, forests, the hospital, the burst of light and the sound of the window breaking, Kell’s body hitting the ground – all the familiar things, well-worn and strangely comfortable.

Sometimes he saw them with his eyes open now, and that wasn’t comfortable, but it was still familiar.

But then there was a new one. He saw himself in his uniform, in the body armor he hadn’t worn for years now, going up and up endless staircases in the hospital. There were bodies on the floor, on cots, bloody or bloated or bone-pale but with their eyes open, grating voices crying out to him for help as he passed, reaching futilely toward his legs. “I’m sorry,” he kept mumbling. “No, I can’t, I have to – I’m looking for someone.” Outside, he could hear the sound of darts, and the distant rumble of buildings giving way.

Melena’s ward had been on the fourth floor in life, but in the dream he must have gone up ten flights of stairs, until his heart pounded and he was sweating, panicked and frustrated with nothing to fight. When he finally, finally got to a floor he recognized, he ran all the way down the hall and threw open the doors, and he was momentarily blinded by the white light coming through the windows.

When his vision cleared, he saw Rodney holding a 250 spinshot with both hands, aimed at Ronon’s head. “Get down on your knees,” he barked, with more than a little of Kell in his voice. 

Ronon did it, and crossed his wrists obediently over his chest, a soldier accepting his orders. “McKay,” he said carefully, “we need to get out of here. They’re coming now.”

He racked the slide on the spinshot with a soldier’s cool professionalism and said, “What are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you be running?”

For a moment he wasn’t sure he could speak. Didn’t know what to say. “Come with me,” he finally said, but it came out weak, almost like a question. “I can’t – I didn’t want to leave without you....”

“Don’t fucking lie to me!” Rodney screamed, and the voice was nothing like his voice, but the eyes were Rodney’s. “You didn’t come for me! Don’t _lie_ to me!”

“Okay,” he said quickly. “You’re right, I– I didn’t think you’d be here. But you are, and I have to get you out now. You’ll die when they get here. Everyone dies when they get here.... You need to come with me and– “

“Oh, please,” Rodney said, this time in a voice that was purely his own, with a matching eye-roll. “You’re going to save me?”

“I know a place we can hide– “

“Who have you saved? Who have you _ever_ saved? Name one person. No,” he said in satisfaction when Ronon had no answer for that. “No, I didn’t think so. Look, it’s nothing personal, all right? I like you. But you’re not the one who saves me.” He lowered the gun to his side and said, “Eight minutes and four seconds. If I were you, I’d start running.”

“Where’s Melena?” he asked as he got to his feet.

Rodney rolled his eyes again and drew incomprehensible shapes in the air with the barrel of his gun. “Dead, obviously. You didn’t think she was _alive_?”

“I thought – she’d be here, I thought she wouldn’t leave the hospital....” He wasn’t sure what he’d thought. Of course Malena was dead. She’d been dead for so long....

He must have woken up then, although at first he thought it was another dream, and then he thought it was just something he was making up. Sheppard was standing over him, looking controlled and impassive, like a taskmaster preparing to assign disciplinary duty – not angry, but pitiless. Ronon ran a hand over his face, trying to wipe the sleep-stickiness out of the corner of his eye.

“You awake?” Sheppard said brusquely. Ronon tried to nod, but he felt numb, leaden. He couldn’t even make his fingers twitch. Sheppard took a deep breath, eyes narrowed in deeply banked anger, and Ronon thought, this was it, this was one too many fuck-ups, one too many small insubordinations and not so small failures to be strong. He’d get in trouble now. He’d deserved it ages ago, but Sheppard was always soft on him. Not anymore, though, Ronon didn’t think. Nothing in his face looked soft now.

“Who am I?” he said. That caught Ronon off guard. He blinked, and Sheppard got a familiar impatient look on his face, one that Ronon usually saw aimed at Rodney, not at him. “Are you _awake_? For Christ’s sake, are you with me or not?” Ronon nodded. “Who am I, then?”

Ronon didn’t know...how he was supposed to answer. But he could tell it was important to say something, now, so he said, “Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, Atlantis base command.” Sheppard raised his eyebrow, waiting for more. After a panicked moment of not knowing anything more to give him, Ronon tentatively said, “My taskmaster.”

“You’re goddamn right I am,” Sheppard said, and there was anger in his voice, but somehow Ronon knew that it wasn’t meant for him. “Now I’m going to tell you what happens next. You’re going to get up, take a shower, get dressed, and eat lunch. Then you’re going to go to Dr. Heightmeyer’s office, and you’re fucking well going to sit there and answer every question she asks you and tell her anything she wants to know, and you’ll do it until she says you can go, and you’ll go back when she tells you to go back, and you’ll do this until she tells you to stop. This is an order. I’ve put fourteen months of my life into turning you into a human being again, and I’ll be damned if I let you go off the deep end now. Who are you?”

“Specialist Ronon Dex.”

Sheppard’s shoulders relaxed, just enough to be visible. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what you told me the first time, too. Name and rank. That’s how you held on, isn’t it? Fake it til you make it – be a soldier whether you feel like one or not.”

“What else was I going to be?” He smiled faintly and added, “It got me through my exam grades. Figured it would work for Running, too.” His smile faltered, thinking about it; he’d never really imagined he’d end up doing it for seven years.

“Up,” Sheppard said brusquely. “If you can’t get yourself pulled together, I’ll have the doctor come here. For you, she can make a house call.”

“No,” Ronon said, pushing himself to sit up. “I can.” He was hungry anyway, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in bed. That was never what he’d wanted

If all he had to be proud of anymore was the ability to dress himself and follow simple orders from his taskmaster, then that’s what he had to do.

 

_“She never cared what anyone thought about her. She let me – she wanted me to live with her, she didn’t care about her reputation. She said it was a stupid, archaic law. She was a doctor; she saw as much death as I did, all the time. She said life– That you could lose your life at any moment, and that if all you have is the handful of days that heaven allows, you should share every one of them with someone you love.”_

_“That’s very beautiful.”_

_Everything about her was. “She was good with words. It’s funny, sometimes I thought...she talked too much. If she ever met McKay.... The two of them could go at it for days.”_

_“Do you think she would approve of your choice?”_

_“I don’t think she’d see it as a choice. But yeah, I think she’d like him. Maybe not at first. But...once she got to know him. I don’t know if she’d like Sheppard, though.”_

_“Why not?”_

_“She’d think he wasn’t good for me. Too military. He’d remind her of Kell.”_

_“Kell?”_

_“My old commander. We were lovers until I met her.”_

 

He went to see Ronon every day. Sometimes they played cards, sometimes checkers – they played with Ronon’s chess set, treating all the pieces alike because Ronon wasn’t in much of a mood to remember all the different moves, and it had been years since John had played chess, too. Checkers was fine, it worked. Ronon played dangerously, giving up piece after piece to press one or two to John’s side of the board to be kinged. He usually lost, but not always.

They didn’t talk much, but it wasn’t the bad kind of silence. They kept their eyes on their cards or on the board while they were playing, but by the end, when it was clear who was winning, they spent more time watching each other – John’s throat, Ronon’s mouth, the slow luxury of extended eye-contact.

Even when John realized it was all foreplay, he couldn’t quite make himself sorry for it. He always left without laying a finger on Ronon, but nobody could say he wasn’t allowed to look, right?

“How’s counseling?” he asked over the checkerboard.

“It’s...okay,” Ronon said, sounding a little surprised himself. “I don’t know if I’m that good at it, but it’s going okay.”

“You’re not the one getting paid; you don’t have to be good at it.”

“I guess you’ve talked to her about me already,” Ronon said. John glanced up at his face, but still couldn’t tell if that was a complaint or not. “From stuff she’s said, it sounds like you have.”

“You had me pretty worried.”

“Not anymore?”

John considered that. “You seem like you’re feeling better.”

“I guess. I’m telling her all this stuff...that I haven’t talked about in...ever. I don’t know, it’s kind of.... I always leave tired. She says it gets easier.”

“Listen,” John said slowly. He hadn’t decided quite when – or if, hadn’t been totally sure he even wanted to at all – but he’d been carrying the damn thing around for a week, and this was the closest he’d come to a moment. “I have something to give you.”

Ronon looked up quickly, his eyebrows drawn together but something bright and boyish on his face that almost made John laugh. He tried not to spoil the mood for himself by wondering how long it had been since anyone had given Ronon a present of any kind. He pulled the heavy coin out of his pocket and laid it by Ronon’s hand.

Ronon picked it up and looked at the pictures on both sides, then squinted at the writing. “I don’t...know all these words,” he said. “I can’t– “

John leaned over to get a look, although he wasn’t sure why. He knew what it said. “Elvis Movie Legacy, Blue Hawaii, 1961,” he read for Ronon’s benefit. “Blue Hawaii was a movie,” John said, painfully aware that his story was going off the rails already. “An Elvis movie, and it was about...Hawaii...which is a place. On Earth.”

Ronon nodded as if that cleared it all up and said, “Okay. Thank you.”

“No, you don’t have to patronize me,” John said with a sigh. “I’m telling you. I’m explaining it.”

“I know, it’s just that when you explain things– “

“No, not this time,” John said. “Just listen, I’m– You’ll understand this one, I think.” Ronon nodded, letting the commemorative coin settle in his palm. “My father’s last post was in Memphis,” he said, “in the mid-90s. That’s where he was when he got sick. He had bone cancer, and I took some leave to go help him out. He was in the hospital a lot, he was too weak to take care of himself. We weren’t...really that close, but, you know, he didn’t have anyone else to do things for him and I...felt like I had to. He was dying. My dad was an Elvis fan, and he’d.... He was a big fan, and he’d lived in Memphis for six years, and he’d never been.... He was such a workaholic. He probably hadn’t had a day off in that whole six years, not until he got sick. But he’d never been there, and I said.... He was dying, you know? Maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a month. So I said I’d take him.”

“To Elvis?” Ronon said, a little wistfully. “Is it nice there?”

“No, it’s– No, Elvis isn’t a place, he’s a person – that person, that’s his picture. Was a person, he’s dead now. But his house is in Memphis, and they’ve made it into a big museum, real tourist destination, and I thought my dad would want to go. Well, he didn’t. He was a stubborn bastard, and he didn’t like leaving the house in his wheelchair, and we had this big goddamn fight about fucking _Elvis_. Well, like there was anything we wouldn’t find a way to fight about, right? By that point, I wanted to push him off a cliff, but mostly I wanted to win the fight, and I did, so then I was stuck actually taking him on this day trip. We didn’t speak practically the whole time. And I knew it was stupid, because we were...we were grown men, and he was dying, and we were fighting about these, just...stupid things. We always fought about such stupid things.”

John broke off, turning the queen over and over between his fingers. Had they ever had a fight that wasn’t stupid? John wasn’t.... He’d never been very rebellious, never really been a disappointment. And his father had taken an interest in his life, had tried to be there, in his hardass way. What the fuck had they been so at odds over, all those years? It was hard even to remember now. Most of what he remembered was pointless shit, like fucking Elvis Presley.

Still looking at the chess piece, John said, “At the very end of the day, when the tour was over and we were getting ready to leave, he says, can we go to the gift shop. First thing he’s said of his own free will all day. So we go to the gift shop, and he sees that coin, and all of a sudden, he’s speaking to me again. He told me that Blue Hawaii was his favorite Elvis movie, and my mom’s, too. They had the album, they used to sing along with it around the house when they were first married. Now, to this day I cannot picture my father singing, but according to him, this is what happened. And then right after I was born – obviously I knew this part, but right after I was born, he got transferred to Hickam, which is in Hawaii. He was one of the guys who did air support for the Apollo astronauts – don’t tell Rodney, he’d be jealous,” John added with a little smile. “Apollo was– “

“I know that one,” Ronon said. “I heard about that.”

“So we lived in Honolulu for eight years – which, obviously, I knew. But I didn’t know.... It was my favorite place. It’s still my favorite place on Earth – Hawaii is. We lived there longer than anywhere else, but it was more than just that. Hawaii was just...I mean, it’s just fucking amazing. You’d have to see.... Well, maybe you will. If I can, sometime I’ll take you there, and you’ll see what I mean. The thing is, though, that it was my father’s favorite place, too. I never knew that. He got transferred all the time, and he never said anything about any of the places we lived – not that he liked them, or missed them when we were gone, not anything. It was just his duty, you know? Base after base after base. But he loved Hawaii, like I did. And I didn’t know that. He never said anything about it. Twenty years later, the man is too weak to stand up, he’s twenty days away from the fucking grave, and for the first time in his life, he just out of nowhere says, hey, you know, son, those years in Hawaii were the best years of my life. That’s what it took for him to tell me he felt that way. Not that I ever asked. I guess I could’ve asked. Anyway. He bought that, and I kept it after he died.”

Ronon looked down at the coin in his hand. “I don’t think I should...have this,” he said. “This is from your family. It’s not my place.”

“I’m giving it to you,” John said firmly. “I always thought my father was...this strong person. Solid steel. And it took me long enough, but I finally figured out that he wasn’t all that strong. There were all these things he had to hide from – everyone, from himself. How he felt about the way things turned out with my mom, the way he felt about me. Hawaii, for Christ’s sake. That was too personal, he couldn’t let that get out until it was too late to matter. He wasn’t strong. He wasn’t half as strong as you are.”

“As I am?” Ronon said, with a catch in his voice.

“I loved my dad,” John said slowly. Weird how long it had taken him to be able to say that. “In a lot of ways, I hated him, too. But mostly I wish he’d been half the man you are. I think a lot of things would have turned out differently if he was. You gave me something because it was a part of who you used to be, where you come from. I’m giving you this. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ronon said. He looked at the coin for a minute more, then laid it on the heel of his hand and used two fingers to work it into the narrow space between his wrist and the leather of his bracer. John watched it disappear, held tightly against Ronon’s skin.

Even though he knew he wouldn’t dare wear it on missions, John had taken that fingerbone off the cord Ronon kept it on and strung it onto the chain along with his dogtags. He could feel it, too, hidden against his skin.

 

_“So there was a rivalry there. Between Kell and – what was her name?”_

_“I’m not.... I can’t, I’m not ready.”_

_“It’s all right. You’ll be ready when you’re ready.”_

_“Yeah, you could call it a rivalry. Kell was...hard to like. He was arrogant. Selfish. Lots of people didn’t like him. She wouldn’t have liked him anyway, but she hated it that I...still felt loyal to him. She said the only thing that was going to come from trying to see the best in Kell was that he was going to get me killed. Which is funny, in a way. Because that’s...not how it happened at all.”_

_“And he was jealous, too.”_

_“Wouldn’t anyone be? One day I’m his favorite, I’m there with him everywhere he goes, he’s – he’s almost my whole life. And then suddenly I get a couple days’ leave, and I come back and say I’ve met this woman and I love her and I’m going to marry her when I can. He didn’t say much. But yeah, he was– He found ways to make the next few months hard on me.” A taskmaster doesn’t have to look very hard to find those. Sheppard’s never.... As many reasons as he had, he never ran his squadron that way. It’s been a long, long time since John Sheppard reminded him of Kell._

_“And after a few months, then what happened?”_

_“The Wraith came.”_

 

Rodney scared five years off his life, lurking around in John’s quarters with the lights off. John was already sitting on the bed taking his boots off when he realized Rodney was there, and then he threw the boot at Rodney’s chair and yelled, “You can’t just break into my room, you asshole,” to cover for the fact that suddenly realizing he wasn’t alone in the room had _terrified_ him.

“I’m sorry,” Rodney said, and that brought John up short, because Rodney mostly only apologized when he was desperate. He stood up and came closer, and John stood up, too – awkward in one boot and one sock, but less awkward than staying on the bed.

Rodney put a hand against his chest, and then there was kissing, although John honestly wasn’t sure who had kissed whom. Either way, he didn’t fight it. Rodney’s mouth was heavy and warm and knowing, and John growled a little into it and put his hand over the back of Rodney’s and pushed it over the inch or two necessary to put Rodney’s fingers against his nipple. He knew immediately to pinch down and rub it between his thumb and the side of his finger, pressure and the chafe of cotton, and John pushed his tongue into Rodney’s mouth and dug his fingers into the back of Rodney’s neck. Fuck, he’d missed this, and the reality was even better than his memories.

He wrenched Rodney’s belt open, and Rodney groaned and grabbed both his wrists, holding them still. “I came to talk to you,” Rodney said.

“We can’t talk later?”

Rodney licked his lips, his dilated eyes darting around the room like he’d find something that could help reinforce his self-control. “I would say yes, but I think you’ll be pretty mad at me if I ask you this after we sleep together. Not that you’re not frequently pretty mad at me anyway, and God, not being able to touch you makes me insane, so the temptation to suck you off now and pay later is certainly– “ John moved in to kiss him again, but Rodney leaned away and said, “No, no, but – no, I have to – I came here about Dex.”

That wasn’t entirely a bucket of ice water, but it did get John’s hands off his belt and pull the world into focus enough for him to say, “Right. So what do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

“I told you, I can’t. I promised him his own timetable– “

“I don’t care about that!”

“ _I_ promised him. _I_ care.”

“You’re supposed to care about _me_!” Rodney said. “I know, I know, I know, he’s hurt, he’s unhappy, he needs your help, but so am I. I worry about him all the time, I miss him, my sleep patterns are absurd and my digestion– “

“Christ, Rodney, do I have to hear about this?”

“I want to know what it is about me that’s so bad for him! I can’t stop– I’m scared that something’s – something will – happen to him, and I won’t ever know if there was anything I could have done, if I could’ve said something to change– “

John gripped him by the shoulders and said, “Listen to me, listen to me, Rodney. Nothing is going to happen to him. Okay? We’re not there anymore. He’s seeing Heightmeyer, he’s feeling a lot better. _Nothing_ is going to happen to him, I promise you.”

“I’m tired of taking your word for it, he could be dead already for all I know. I need to see him. Colonel, I need to see him for myself.”

John let his hands slip away. “I can’t do it, Rodney. The answer is no.”

“Do you want me to _beg_?” Rodney asked, equal parts bitter and desperate, so that John couldn’t tell for sure if the question was hypothetical or not.

Not that it mattered. “No, Rodney, I don’t,” he said, suddenly exhausted. “That’s really not my kink.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“No,” John said. He felt a little guilty at the relief in Rodney’s eyes, because he wasn’t sure that what they were doing together was any less dangerous. He wasn’t sure how to explain that, though, so instead he said, “I probably will, though, if he asks me. I mean, maybe he won’t ask, but....”

“And...if I asked you?”

Pointedly, John glanced down at where Rodney’s cock pressed the fabric of his boxers out through the open v of his pants. “Yes, right,” Rodney said, tucking himself away and buckling his belt without looking up at John’s face. “I’m sorry, you were right, I shouldn’t have come in here, I shouldn’t...I don’t have any right.”

“I wish I could help you,” John said. “I honestly do.”

“Well, I don’t think emotionally messy breakup sex is really going to help,” Rodney admitted with a martyred sigh. “Though if I find the problem that that is the solution to, you’ll be the first to know.”

“I better be,” John said, mildly offended at the idea that anyone else was even a candidate.

“Would you really sleep with him behind my back?” Rodney sounded more curious than aggrieved by the idea.

He thought about lying, but actually, he wasn’t sure he could pull off lying to Rodney’s face even if he wanted to. He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged awkwardly. “Technically, would it be behind your back, since I just told you about it?”

“This may well be our most psychotic relationship conversation yet,” Rodney said morosely. “Shouldn’t we be getting better at this?”

“Stay out of my room,” John said, but it came out almost affectionately.

 

_“So you weren’t with her very long.”_

_“I don’t think you have to.... I mean, I knew right away. It wasn’t a crush.”_

_“I didn’t mean to imply that it was.”_

_“He wasn’t a good person. Kell. I wanted him to be – tried to believe he was – but he wasn’t. I went to him, after the bombing first started. I asked him to put her on his surgical staff so that she could go through the Gate with us – this was back when I thought my squadron would be going, too. He made me bribe him. Then he made me beg him. I don’t know which part he liked better. I don’t know why I loved him so much. I don’t know why I.... I still wonder, if she’d never come along, would he really have left me there to die? I still want to think that he...that he cared about me, at least that much. If he hadn’t been so angry, or felt like I abandoned him first.... I wish it didn’t make any difference. He doesn’t even deserve that much of me.”_

_“Some people perceive their partners’ jealousy as a sign that their feelings are sincere.”_

_Lucky thing he’s not one of those people. “I’d rather be with someone I trust not to leave me behind.”_

 

There was a group of people on Atlantis who met once a week to read their sacred texts together. “What else do they do?” Ronon asked Sheppard. “Is it all reading?” Ronon could read; he borrowed books from all over the city for practice. He found English a harder language than some to master, but it seemed important to improve. Everyone read in Atlantis, all the time. 

Sheppard gave him a long look over his cards, but he sounded casual when he said, “I don’t know, I’ve never been.”

“But...they’re from your world. You know what they do.”

“I was never really a churchgoer,” Sheppard said.

Ronon discarded and drew two new cards. “It’s probably mostly reading. And meditating. Things like that.”

Sheppard kept looking at him, his expression obscure. “Maybe. Why don’t you go and find out?” Ronon shrugged. “Nobody would mind,” Sheppard said. “If you’re curious, you should go.”

“You just want me to leave my room more.”

“Picked up on that, huh?” Sheppard said with a wry little smile.

“I started going back to yoga.” He found himself oddly shy in admitting that. “I went this morning, and yesterday.”

“Was that Heightmeyer’s idea?”

“No, but she likes it. She says it’s good for finding my center.”

“Yeah, I don’t really know what that means,” Sheppard said.

“Me either,” Ronon said, which wasn’t true. He was pretty sure he knew exactly the feeling she was talking about. “It’s probably boring,” he said. “And it’s in the morning. Why does Earth religion always happen first thing in the morning?”

“Start you off on the right foot, I guess,” Sheppard said, strangely dry – like he meant it as a joke, even though it seemed like a perfectly reasonable answer to Ronon.

But he did go, the next time they met. Everyone seemed perfectly fine with him being there, and Walker, a big guy with coppery skin and freckles who Ronon had sparred with several times before, seemed to claim a particular guardianship over him and offered to loan him his book.

It was a pretty thick book, as thick as the one Sheppard had been reading ever since Ronon met him. Walker could obviously tell from his face that he was slightly daunted, and he laughed tolerantly and thumped Ronon’s arm with his fist. “The worst parts are all up towards the front,” he said, flipping the pages in Ronon’s hands toward the back. “The New Testament cuts a little bit more to the chase; you might want to start there. It’s about the life of Jesus Christ – you know who that is?”

“Sure,” Ronon said. After you heard a couple of people call out some stranger’s name in bed with you, you got curious. Although he didn’t think it was a good idea to go into that much detail with Walker. “He’s an Ascended master.”

Walker looked a little perplexed by that. “Well...no,” he said. “I mean, I could see how– But not exactly, no.”

He tried to explain, and then some other people came and sat down with them and tried to explain some other things, and there were a lot of things Ronon knew he wasn’t catching onto – like how they kept talking about their god, but no one could tell him what god, or even much about what he was like. But then there were parts that Walker said not to worry about, parts he said were confusing, but they made perfect sense to Ronon, like how this master of theirs wasn’t half-god and half-human, but all god and all human at the same time. That sounded like enlightenment to Ronon – like the way normal people were defined by being certain things that they were and not the things that they weren’t, but how the truly wise and the most advanced masters lived in a state past all that. The wise – Ronon couldn’t remember the exact text, he hadn’t had any need to remember those things he’d had to memorize in school for years and years, but it was something like – the wise man knows what it is to be a father and a son, what it is to have a body and a soul, what it is to be and to be without – but the enlightened man has and has no father or son, he has and has no body or soul, he is and is not, but he is not, nor is he not. It was...something like that. Ronon was glad he wasn’t the one having to do all the explaining.

Just after the group broke up, an older soldier – Sheppard’s age or something like that – who Ronon thought was called Aster caught up to him. At first he said what everyone said, how glad they were that Ronon had come, and then like a lot of the others, he seemed to want to talk about the book, even though Ronon was pretty worn out by then and he wasn’t sure he felt like listening to any more.

“I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes,” Aster said. He had a soft voice, though nothing else about him looked soft. “I just thought.... Well, I’m a soldier. I never wanted to be anything else. And I was raised religious, but I never really understood it – I was a kid, I never thought it would matter to me – until I’d been in combat. And then I really wanted to believe in something, but I still had trouble.... I talked to the base chaplain, and I just told him – I said, I wanted to have a relationship with God, but I didn’t know if I could relate to the Gospel message. I told him I didn’t feel like peace had anything to do with my life anymore. What he told me was to read Psalms. He said it was like listening to the people who’d gone before you, who’d had the same doubts you did, the same fears. And it was like that – for me, it was. It is. So I thought.... You strike me as like that, too. You have that...soldier’s mindset. I think they’d be.... If I were you, that’s where I’d go first. Psalms.”

“Thanks,” Ronon said.

When Sheppard asked him how it had gone, he shrugged and said, “I was right. They want you to read a lot. Not that much meditating, though.” Most everything that had gone on went on out loud; there was a lot of talking to their god and asking him to take care of people at home, to watch over Atlantis, to make them all strong and brave and good. Ronon didn’t know of any god that could make all that happen, but it would’ve been rude to say so.

Later that night, he flipped through the book and found the part marked Psalms. He picked one out at random, and at first he had to concentrate on reading the words, but just a few lines in there was a part that said, “When evildoers came at me to eat up my flesh, even my adversaries and my foes, they stumbled and fell,” and that sounded so much like it was written about the Wraith that it gave Ronon a weird feeling. It didn’t sound like something out of a book from the Milky Way galaxy. Suddenly he was more interested than he thought he’d be, and he thought he knew what Aster meant about listening to someone like you, gone before.

It took him most of the evening just to read that one, and it was number 27 out of more than a hundred. He was never, ever going to get through the whole book, or even just the Psalms part. But when he put it aside to go to sleep, he kept hearing fragments of it in his head, especially from near the end where it went, “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

Ronon wondered if that long-gone soldier from a different galaxy had ever gotten what he was waiting for – if he’d seen goodness, or his god, before he died. 

 

_“So there’s a lot of anger tied up in that relationship, too.”_

_“Back to this again.”_

_“Aggression is aggression, even when you turn it against yourself.”_

_“I’m not angry...exactly.”_

_“What, then?”_

_“I don’t know. Frustrated? It’s like.... If you’re in this big room, or a building, and the power fails and you’re trying to find your way around in the dark. And you’re going around and around and you can’t find anything and you’re not sure where you are or when the lights are coming back on, and you start to get – not angry *at* anything. Just pissed off.”_

_“Frustrated.”_

_“Yeah. I just can’t see where I am anymore.”_

 

“I didn’t know you ran,” he said when he met up with Weir, catching her breath at the top of the 15C tower, where a lot of people liked to jog because the stairs were broad and sloped gradually all the way up. Ronon himself didn’t run there often; if he was running for the challenge he liked the catwalks and the narrow stairways in the engineering corridors, and if he was doing it to pass the time, he usually went outside. It was raining out now, though, harsh eastern winds driving the gray rain almost sideways. If you were really quiet here in these upper rooms, you could hear it battering softly against the walls of Atlantis.

She looked up from where her palms were braced on her black sweatpants; she looked different, with her hair damp and tied back and her face all sweaty. He wasn’t used to seeing her do anything but desk work – talking work. She made a little face and said, “Apparently...not often enough.”

“Want me to go back and get you some water?” he offered, because she really did look kind of red and unhappy.

“All the way down and back up?” she said, somewhere between amused and disturbed. Ronon shrugged. Weir stood up and patted at the loose strands of her hair. “Thank you,” she said. “But I can surely make it down myself. Is John with you?” He shook his head, and she looked at him thoughtfully for a minute and then said in that falsely light tone that Sheppard was so good at, “I thought you two usually kept each other company when you ran.”

“Depends,” he said. “If Sheppard comes, he starts going faster, and then I start going faster, and it always ends up...you know.”

“Competitive?” she said, arching an eyebrow.

Ronon nodded. “It’s good for improving my time, but sometimes I’d rather think about other things.”

“Really?” she said. “I think one of the benefits of exercise is that it keeps you from thinking. It helps me...get out of my own head.”

That seemed weird. Running was boring and repetitive – where else would you be while you were doing it, except in your head? But it figured that Weir did this, too, exactly the way he never would’ve guessed. “You sure you’re okay?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and she did sound better. “Are you?”

He’d set himself up for that one, and he acknowledged it with a little smile. “Still on my feet,” he said. “Come on, I’ll go back down with you.”

Weir groaned pitifully. “I’m sure I’ll slow you down. You go ahead.”

“It’s all downhill,” he said. “You’ll be fine.” She made another tragic little noise, and he grinned and said, “What do you want, sympathy? You finished the hard part already.”

“You must have been a personal trainer in a previous life,” Weir said, and he wasn’t sure what that was, but she said it like it was a pretty disreputable thing to be. “You go on, I’ll only slow you down.”

“Come on,” he said. “Slower’s not going to hurt me. I used to run with Malena, and I know you can’t be slower than her.”

He was stunned as soon as he heard himself say it, first because it was the one and only time he’d said her name out loud since the day she died, and then because it had been...so easy to do. It felt like a natural thing to talk about, even to someone he was only casually invested in like Weir.

It seemed like he should be able to feel the name somewhere, like it was too important to sound for one moment and then be gone, like any other word. He wanted to steal it back out of the air – he wanted it to be a secret again – he wanted to hear the sound of it – he wanted to remember her.

He wanted to remember.

Weir seemed aware that he’d said something interesting, but she was too polite to pry. “Downhill is easier, right?” she said, trying for optimism.

He smirked at her and said, “That’s why they call it downhill.”

“Everybody’s a comedian,” she said, giving him her wide, pretty smile. “If I keel over and just fall down the last two floors, let it be on your head.”

“Hard part’s over,” he said. “You’re not going to fall.”

 

_“I wouldn’t really have done it,” he admits. “The – the thing you think I was going to do. I wouldn’t have.” He’s pretty sure of that. It was a strange time, he remembers being confused and scared and angry, but he was still himself. A gun is power – most of his life it’s been the only power he’s had, and so he’s not afraid to use it when he needs to change his world, or even just to make a point and make it stick. But that doesn’t mean he has any love of death. He’s a competitive person; he runs to win, he fights to win. He doesn’t think it’s in him to make plans to die._

_“No?” she says. She doesn’t sound surprised. “Why did you let Colonel Sheppard believe you would, then?”_

_He starts to answer, but there isn’t any answer. He doesn’t know. “I didn’t just let him,” he says slowly. “I wanted him to think that. I wanted to scare him, and I – don’t know why. Why did I do that?”_

_It’s the first question she’s asked him that he would really like to know the answer to._

 

For a long time it seemed like Ronon was never going to want to do anything again, and then all at once he was bored and nothing John suggested seemed to be the right fit. He wasn’t interested in running (which he used to be, a lot) or playing basketball (which he never really had been, in spite of his good-faith attempts to develop an interest in the Atlantis expedition’s sport of choice) or skateboarding (which John suspected he only ever had a real interest in because he liked being the only person John had ever loaned his board to). Cards got a no, checkers got a no, Halo got a faint eye-roll. It was like babysitting an eleven-year-old boy.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked after the fifteenth thing that didn’t sound interesting to Ronon, but he said no to that, too, with a wounded little look that made John feel guilty for asking. After a minute’s internal debate, he decided he felt bad enough to volunteer for hazardous duty, and he said, “Do you want to spar? We haven’t done that in a while.” All John’s bruises had even had time to fade.

Ronon smirked at him from the bed, where he was scuffing his bare feet against the wall. “It’s kind of not as much fun as you’d think, when we already know how it’ll end.”

“Hey,” John protested, but that just made Ronon’s smile grow wider, and that was so nice to see that John didn’t actually mind the slur. “Sex pretty much always ends with an orgasm, but I never hear you complaining about a lack of suspense there.”

“Good point,” Ronon said, his voice rich with soft laughter. He turned his head to make eye contact with John and said, low and still warm with humor, “You offering?”

“Not really,” John said. It was supposed to be casual, but it sounded grating and forced to John – which was reasonable, because he was forcing himself to say it. God, was he ever forcing himself to say it....

“Today’s Monday, right?” Ronon asked, which was so completely not any of the directions John had been expecting this conversation to go that it took him a few seconds to come up with confirmation. “What movie are they showing tonight?”

Movie. Movie. Slowly, John’s brain was bending away from the images of himself crawling over Ronon’s body, sucking on his ear, feeling Ronon’s breath come in hot, short bursts against his face and Ronon’s hips squirm restlessly against the inside of his thighs, and toward the subject of cafeteria movie night. “Ghostbusters,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that’s what I heard.”

“Is it any good?”

The lag time before John’s responses was tightening up; they were almost back to the rhythms of a perfectly normal, non-sex-related conversation. “Yeah, it’s good,” he said. “It’s good, it’s funny.”

“I want to go to that,” Ronon said levelly.

Which was a big fucking deal, because there would be people there, lots of them, and even though Ronon had been venturing out in fits and starts for a couple of weeks now, he had yet to let himself be in the middle of a crowd, in public, where anyone could stare at him or even, God forbid, start talking to him. It was a huge deal.

“You should go,” John said. Every word felt slow and sticky; every word felt like it started down in the pit of his stomach and broke a rib or two on the way out. “You should call Rodney and take him with you.”

Ronon rubbed his hand across his mouth, watching the ceiling and not John. “He’s banned from movie night, remember?”

“Still,” John said. “You should...call him anyway. He misses you.”

“He misses _you_ ,” Ronon said, and even if that was the case, what the hell did it prove? Any way you sliced it, John was pretty sure that there was no argument buried in there for why it was just fine and dandy for him to date Rodney’s boyfriend.

Rodney was a friend and a teammate, as well as Rodney, and John would’ve stepped in front of a bullet to protect him. Maybe it was fucked up that stepping in front of a bullet felt easier than closing and locking the door on...on whatever could’ve been there between him and Ronon, but at the end of the day it was all just the same thing.

“I want to go with you,” Ronon said, his voice flat with a strange, helpless ache underneath it that matched the one in John’s chest. “I want to be with you. Do you think that’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” John admitted.

“It’s too much work to keep pretending I only feel the things I’m supposed to feel about you.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“It’s just a fucking movie.”

“Yeah, let’s do this in half-assed little bits and pieces,” John snapped, more annoyed at himself for considering it than he was at Ronon for proposing it. “It’ll just be a movie, then it’ll be just one kiss, and then, you know, there’s always going to be just one more thing to want, one more thing that if – if we could just have that, then it would be enough, and we could stop. It’ll always be just that one next thing, we’ll always be almost ready to let go of each other but we’ll never really be there.”

“Do you think we aren’t already doing it that way?” Ronon said, just a little louder than he usually spoke, just a little rougher around the edges. “I act like I need you, but just as a friend, and you say you love me, but like a brother, and we pretend that’s enough for us, but it’s not. It never has been. It’s never going to be. For you and me, it’s bits and pieces or it’s nothing, and...I don’t want to have nothing.”

Personally, John thought that if nothing were a viable option, he’d go for it. But there was always _something_ there, would always be something there, and he’d lost his shot at a casual acquaintance with Ronon Dex a long damn time ago. “Okay,” he said quietly. “We can do the movie thing.”

Things were already fucked up. They might as well be fucked up in a way that made somebody even a little bit happy, for once.

 

_“Don’t you ever *answer* any questions?”_

_She smiles, a little unhappily. “As a matter of fact, I don’t, much. That isn’t really my job.”_

_He’d like to know whose job it is._

_She surprises him by adding, “I can answer this one, though, if you want. This one is easy – common.”_

_“Yeah?” It’s hard for him to believe. He feels so messed up, so out of step with the world. He never figured anyone felt like this before him, let alone lots of people._

_“Yeah,” she says kindly. “They took you seriously when they thought you were suicidal. They stopped treating it like a phase and started behaving as if you were in real danger. And you were in real danger. You knew that. You’re not comfortable with verbal self-disclosure, so you couldn’t tell anyone. You made it physical instead, made it something they could see when it was right in front of them. And it worked. It’s a desperate tactic, but it does sometimes work. We call it a cry for help.”_

 

Ronon didn’t know if he was just paranoid or what. He and John had gone to cafeteria movies together plenty of times before, but it seemed like this time everyone was looking at them differently – like everybody immediately knew that things were different now.

He was pretty sure things were different, although he couldn’t have explained how.

People smiled at him and touched his shoulder and said “Welcome back” like he’d been away on leave, and it made him feel pleased but awkward, like he should be apologizing to all these people he didn’t even know very well, but who seemed like maybe they’d missed him. Sheppard stayed right by his shoulder, easygoing and untouchable as ever, and he didn’t seem to notice the thoughtful glances that people kept throwing their way, but Ronon would’ve been willing to bet he did notice them. Sheppard didn’t miss much.

Sheppard went to get popcorn from the kitchen, and Ronon got them seats on the furthest bench back, telling himself he wasn’t trying to hide. Zelenka was there holding hands with some woman scientist that Ronon didn’t know, and he gave Ronon a small, cold smile and said, “I will be sure to tell Rodney how much improved you look,” in a tone that obviously meant _I will be sure to tell Rodney you are making a fool of him in front of everyone._

“Yeah, thanks,” Ronon said dryly. “He’ll appreciate that.”

By the time the movie started, Ronon had decided _fuck it_ , and that made him more relaxed. He didn’t care how close to Sheppard he sat on the bench, wasn’t worried about swinging his foot slowly so that his calf brushed back and forth against Sheppard’s. He leaned back against the wall and let his arm be hidden behind Sheppard’s so that no one could see the way he curled his fingers, his knuckles resting in the hollow of Sheppard’s palm. Sheppard watched the screen neutrally, but Ronon could swear he could hear his heart beating.

The movie was pretty good – even if every character reminded him in one way or another of Rodney, or maybe because of that. During parts of it, Ronon almost forgot about Sheppard for minutes at a time.

“You want to stay and I’ll go?” Ronon murmured under the music of the closing credits. He didn’t have to move his head much at all to be speaking quietly into Sheppard’s ear.

Sheppard gave him a few beats of silence, his eyes still on the screen, before he said, “Nah, I don’t feel much like mingling. We can both go.”

He dropped his voice even lower, so low he wasn’t sure Sheppard would even hear him. “If you leave with me, everybody’ll think we’re fucking.”

One corner of Sheppard’s mouth quirked. “Looks to me like they do already. Let’s just go.”

They weren’t touching at all as they left the cafeteria, or even looking at each other, but Ronon could feel eyes on their backs. “Think I should kick someone’s ass?” he said as they stepped into the hall. He wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

“Because that won’t make us look guilty at all,” Sheppard said.

“How can they tell?” Ronon asked helplessly.

Sheppard was walking almost on the other side of the hall and looking like he almost didn’t realize there was anyone near him, at least until he turned his head to give Ronon an appraising look. “Maybe we look shifty. Maybe they just think it’s, I don’t know, kind of gay of me to spend the last two weeks nursing you back to health.”

“You didn’t nurse me,” Ronon grumbled. “It was...moral support.”

Sheppard snorted, but he didn’t say anything else until they got to Ronon’s door. Ronon brushed his fingertips over the sensors just as Sheppard gestured vaguely at the door and said, “I’ll, uh, let you...I mean, I guess I’ll see you later.”

“You sorry we went?”

“No,” Sheppard said after a beat. “No, I just.... What the hell. I had fun, in a sick sort of way.”

Ronon stepped backwards through the door. He could see the whole hall from there, and it was empty in both directions. “Come in,” he said in a low voice.

“I better not,” Sheppard said roughly.

“For a minute,” Ronon said. “You don’t have to stay.”

He looked like he was going to keep arguing, but then he didn’t. When he stepped inside, the door slid shut behind him; Ronon didn’t know if Sheppard did that with his mind, or if it was some kind of automatic thing he’d never noticed before.

Ronon cupped one hand around Sheppard’s jaw, and when he didn’t pull away, he put his other hand on the back of Sheppard’s head and drew him close enough to kiss. Sheppard’s lips parted as soon as Ronon touched them, oddly hesitant even as he returned the kiss – oddly delicate.

Sheppard put one hand on his waist and pushed him gently away. “You’re determined to make sucker-punching my career seem like a really great idea, aren’t you?” he said huskily.

“You said they couldn’t take Atlantis away from you.”

“No, I said they wouldn’t. And I’m more than likely right about that, which doesn’t mean there might not be...repercussions. It’s complicated to explain.”

He rubbed his thumb lightly over Sheppard’s cheekbone as he let his hand slip away. “Love you,” he mumbled, like it was somehow safer to say if he mumbled it. “Goodnight.”

For a second he looked stunned, for another second he looked puzzled, and then for a second after that he looked grim. “Fuck,” he said sharply, and grabbed Ronon’s shirt by the shoulder and in the front with his other hand and jerked him down into another kiss.

Not hesitant or delicate this time – all tongue and muscle and tension, white knuckles and white heat, and Ronon wrapped his arms hard around Sheppard’s waist and pushed his back against the wall, memorizing every contour of his lips by the taste of them, breathing in each harsh, hungry breath Sheppard panted out. When Sheppard turned his face away for air, Ronon could hear his own voice, saying “John, John, John,” against his face and his stubbled jawline.

“Shhh,” John said, pressing the heels of his hands into the stressed tendons in Ronon’s shoulders. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Ronon said, because even if it wasn’t, even if he wasn’t quite ready to believe yet that everything was okay, he had Sheppard arching against him and pressing open, messy kisses against his mouth, and more importantly, he knew how Sheppard would answer him when Ronon pushed his fingertips inside the waistband of Sheppard’s pants and against the soft, vulnerable skin above his hipbones and said, “Be with me. Stay with me.”

“I will, I will,” Sheppard said, desperate and choked as he tried to hook an ankle around Ronon’s leg and pull his thigh closer. “As long as you want me to.”

 

_“I don’t need help.”_

_“You know,” she says, almost like she doesn’t hear him, “over the past few weeks, I’ve talked with more or less everyone who knows you or has any relationship with you at all, and that keeps coming up, over and over. You’re a loner. You won’t ask for help, you get angry when it’s offered. You take all the responsibility for everything that affects you on yourself.”_

_“It’s not bad to take responsibility.”_

_“No, except that you’re selfish about it.” He blinks at her, surprised into silence. He’s selfish about it? “Other people need and want to be independent agents, too,” she says. “You claim these fights for yourself, you take all this blame on yourself. You want all the control, whatever the risk, whatever the price of failure – and believe me, you’re paying the price for it right now, because you had to fail. Nobody could be what you expect yourself to be. No one person will ever be able to destroy the Wraith, nobody will ever be able to put right what happened on Sateda. Your loss is real, and it’s permanent, and it could happen to you again.”_

_“Don’t you think I know that?”_

_“I know you know that. But to insist on being the only one who knows that – to refuse any and all of these people who love you the right to be a part of your grief, or even to be a witness to it – that’s selfish. Hoarding your pain is still hoarding. And preserving your sole ownership of the anger that makes you fight...well, that’s not just a psychological danger. That’s going to get you killed. You’d be dead right now if your friends weren’t already fairly adept at ignoring your more irrational demands.”_

_He thinks of something Teyla said to him in the early days, when they were all still mostly strangers to him, and he almost laughs. Nobody will ever mistake her for an Atlantean, but she fits in so well here because she understands the way Atlanteans give orders, and the way they ignore them. *We decide.*_

 

Okay, so the stoic self-denial thing didn’t work out like John had planned. How could it, with Ronon grabbing his own shirt and yanking it off in one smooth motion, then hooking the hem of John’s shirt with his thumbs and folding it up and up John’s body, shifting the cloth against his nipples and running the blunt, warm pads of his fingers over his back?

New plan. He was going to get laid to within a centimeter of his almost-forty-years-old physical limitations.

Ronon paused when they were both half-stripped, looking at John’s chest with a little frown, and John wasn’t quite sure why until he reached out to the white fingerbone lying against the dark hair on John’s chest. It clacked quietly against the metal tags as Ronon touched it. He looked up into John’s eyes hesitantly, and John gave him a half-smile and said, “It belonged to this guy I used to know. He was hot as hell, although he badly needed a shower and he ate with his fingers.”

“Sounds like just your type,” Ronon said dryly.

“Well, I’m not going to lie,” John said, running his fingers over Ronon’s biceps, “he made a pretty good jack-off fantasy. Couldn’t hold a candle to you, though.”

Ronon flattened a hand against the small of his back, letting the tip of his index finger drop low enough to tease the cleft of his ass. He kissed John once more, deep but short, and growled, “I’m going to do things to you tonight that you’ll never jack off again without thinking about.”

“Here’s the tricky thing about predicting the future,” John said, using the element of surprise to push Ronon to the side so that he wound up with his back against the wall and John’s palms pressed to his chest. “This isn’t going to be about me,” he promised as he went to his knees.

His muscles tensed as John worked his pants open, but thankfully he didn’t fucking argue. Still, just to be sure, John looked up as he pulled the leather down Ronon’s hips. Ronon met his eyes, breathing slowly and deeply, apparently oblivious to the fact that his legs were shaking slightly as John slid the backs of his hands up the warm, slightly sweaty insides of his thighs. “Who am I?”

He took just a second to gather himself before he answered, his head tipped back against the wall as he swallowed hard. Then he looked back down and said in his low, sensual voice, “John, John Sheppard. I know you, John.”

“Good,” John said brusquely before putting his tongue to better use traveling all the way around the head of Ronon’s cock.

Very much to John’s surprise, Ronon didn’t take his blowjob, as it were, lying down. Insistent as Ronon normally was on being the one lavishing his talents on his partner (what had Rodney called him? hot and cold running porn?), apparently once he’d been persuaded into the position of the done-to rather than the doer, he liked to get his money’s worth. Carefully but firmly, he put a hand under John’s chin and his thumb right at the hinge of his jaw, urging John’s mouth open and guiding it around his cock; his other hand settled in John’s hair, close to the scalp. It wasn’t quite like being held in place – he wasn’t held at all; Ronon’s hands moved with John’s movements, following his pace – but he knew Ronon’s body way too well not to realize how much potential strength was pressed right there against his skull and his neck. It was terrifyingly sexy, and John murmured appreciatively around Ronon’s cock, feeling himself go languid in Ronon’s hands, his throat loosening compliantly.

Jesus _fuck_ , it was hardly fair that Ronon was even good at _getting_ blown. No wonder Rodney was such a junkie for this.

When John had him deeper in his mouth than he’d ever expected to have anything, Ronon ran his thumb under John’s eye and started to talk – softly slurred, almost drunken sounds that came together in fits and starts, _John_ and _I love the way you_ and _never could stop_ , all emerging from the background noise of happy nonsense. Delighted by the sound of his voice and the mindlessness of his babble, John sucked harder, dragging the tip of his tongue hard near the root and making his hips jump.

His throat hurt and his lips were slightly numb when he pulled off, babbling his own semi-nonsense that was meant to convey _take me to bed_ and _touch me_ and _now, now_. Ronon seemed able to speak the language, because he helped drag John to his feet and kissed him all the way across the room, kicking off his pants as he pushed John to the bed. John grabbed a double handful of dreads as Ronon dug blunt kisses like bites into John’s neck and stripped him out of his own pants; he knew there were likely to be bruises on his neck tomorrow, but it felt like there should be burn marks from the way Ronon’s spit-slick and stone-hard cock rubbed along John’s stomach.

He braced one hand on the mattress near John’s head and ran the other up John’s side. John had just enough clarity to realize that he’d already lost ground on this goal of his to indulge Ronon’s fantasies for once, and he said, “Wait, wait, wait,” as he kissed Ronon, because one syllable at a time was about what his brain could hold.

Ronon took him at his word, pausing with his lips brushing against John’s cheek and asking, “What?”

John swallowed several times, which didn’t get the taste of Ronon out of his mouth. “Wait,” he said again, hoarsely. “This is – for you. Let me do what you want me to. Whatever...you want me to do.”

He managed to open his eyes a few seconds after he realized Ronon’s hand wasn’t on his ribs anymore, that Ronon’s body wasn’t an inch above his. He saw Ronon kneeling low on the bed, intently studying John’s sprawled body. He put a gentle hand on John’s calf and said, “Are you being weird?” in a warm, amused tone.

“No,” John said huffily. “It’s just, what was so wrong with the blowjob? Can you not lie there and get a blowjob and just like it, do you always have to be on top?”

“I can like it just fine,” Ronon chuckled. “I like it the way you do it, a lot.”

“Okay,” John said after a couple of failed attempts to form words. Ronon was still watching him curiously, like he didn’t understand but was willing to let John get by on good looks. “Listen, it would’ve been okay early on,” John admitted. “But you’re more than a piece of ass now. I want you to – I want you to be happy, and God knows it’s hard enough. Just – let me blow you. If you like it so much, let me do it for you.”

Ronon seemed to think that over for a minute – or maybe he’d stopped listening, it was hard to tell. But then he leaned over and kissed John soft and slow, and when he moved away he pressed something narrow and plastic into John’s hand – a headset.

“Call him now,” Ronon said quietly, his mouth an inch above John’s. “I’m ready.”

“Call.... You’re serious?” John had no idea whether the sudden explosive feeling in his chest was lust, impending doom, or just your garden-variety cardiac arrest.

“I’m serious. And you promised. You said, when I say it’s okay.”

He hadn’t been envisioning this exact scenario, when he said that. But Ronon was looking at him with expectant, vulnerable eyes and reminding him of a promise, and holy shit, Rodney was going to freak out in about four different directions at once, and there were roughly a hundred reasons not to do this, and on the other hand nothing but three people who had never really stopped wanting it, and did that math really add up?

“This is a bad idea,” John said, for form’s sake.

“No, it’s not,” Ronon said, kissing behind his ear and lowering his body flat against John’s, heat and pressure and all good things, all on offer. “Don’t worry,” he added as John fumbled to get the headset turned around in his hand so that he could turn it on. “You can still blow me, too.”

 

_“Maybe I’m mad at him.”_

_“At whom?” she asks, although he thinks she knows._

_“Sheppard. He just – he makes people unhappy. He doesn’t mean to, but he does. It’s annoying.”_

_“Does he make you unhappy?”_

_“Not me, so much,” he says. He can’t look at her, can only look down at his knees, where his fingers pick idly at the seam on his pants. “It’s not...I can’t tell you this stuff. It’s not mine to tell.”_

_“It must affect you, if you brought it up.”_

_“The thing about Sheppard,” he says, choosing his words slowly, painstakingly, “is that he could be happy, but he isn’t. And I just get...angry, watching him have all this stuff, and then acting like he doesn’t care about it.”_

_She doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure if she wants him to say more, or if she’s quiet because she knows he’s already said practically everything he can about this._

_“He stole a jumper,” Ronon says. She may understand, if he tells her from the side. She’s pretty smart. “I went after him, and I shot him. I mean, my head was all screwed up, but I remember...when I shot him, I was thinking he deserved.... Here was this person – this good, I mean, to me he was a good person, at the time, I thought – he was this good person, and all he wanted was for Sheppard to want him around. He just wanted to be close to him, and Sheppard – he just never lets – he can never let that happen. I shot him because it was my job, but I liked doing it. I thought he deserved it. All that was the drugs, I know, but it felt like....”_

_“Okay,” she says after a while. “I know you don’t feel like you can tell me about other people, and I respect that. Can we just agree to say that...you’re under a certain amount of stress because of your inability to change the way Colonel Sheppard relates to the people in his life?”_

_“Yeah,” he says, relieved. “It’s...stressful.”_

 

“Oh,” Rodney said, stunned into genuine incoherence. “Oh...God.” Two syllables was one more than John liked to hear, so he pulled off Ronon’s cock just enough to give Rodney a good view of his tongue brushing over the head of it, and Rodney said something like, “Nnnh,” which was more what John had in mind.

Ronon extended an arm off the side of the bed and said in a raspy voice, “Come on. Come here, kiss me.”

That was a lot more syllables than John liked to hear, but in a good cause. He fondled Ronon’s balls, watching up through his eyelashes as Rodney gripped Ronon’s hand and bent over to kiss him.

Ronon lifted his other hand and put it behind Rodney’s head, tugging him down to the mattress, and John got clipped by a shoe as Rodney toed them off hastily and kicked them off the foot of the bed. He leaned across Ronon’s chest, propping himself up nose-to-nose with him so that John couldn’t see either of their faces clearly. “I’m sorry,” he heard Ronon say, quiet and miserable.

“You’re a jerk. I was so _worried_ about you. Don’t you think I have enough to keep me occupied worrying about things that happen to _me_?”

“I was selfish, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” John could see his fingers tighten against Rodney’s hair, pulling him down to kiss him between every syllable. “I missed you.”

“Is that why, uh....” Rodney pulled away enough to crane his head around and look at John. He made a complex gesture that encompassed John and the whole span of Ronon’s body and said, “Is this for me?”

“Um.” John could hear Ronon’s hidden smile clearly. “Okay. Sure.”

Aware that he was being humored, Rodney bristled anyway. “Well, I just thought it was maybe my turn. Since last time it was all because of Colonel Sheppard– “

“Oh, it was _not_ ,” John objected. “That is such a load of– “

Ronon’s voice cut over his, a scaled-down version of his booming battlefield voice, but equally not an invitation to screw around. “No fighting. If you two start fighting, this never happens again, ever.”

For a moment, Rodney looked penitent, and then he looked worried. “You mean no fighting...ever?”

After a tense second, the corner of Ronon’s mouth curved. “Tonight. How about just tonight.”

“Oh, I can do that, I absolutely can,” Rodney said, nodding almost frantically.

“Yes, sir,” John said dryly, and put his mouth back to approved uses.

 

_“But you’re on good terms with him.”_

_“Good terms?”_

_“With Colonel Sheppard. You get along with him.”_

_He shrugs. Sheppard’s not hard to get along with. There’s pretty much just one person in the city who can’t manage it. “Yeah.”_

_“The stress doesn’t affect your relationship?”_

_He shrugs again. “He’s my taskmaster.” Stress or no stress, that doesn’t change._

_“Being your superior officer doesn’t make him something other than a human being. You’re entitled to feel any way you need to feel about– “_

_“That’s not what I said, I said– Never mind. You don’t understand.”_

 

 

Apparently, Rodney and Ronon kissed loudly. Maybe it was the extra fuel from being apart so long. Maybe they always made out this way – harsh breathing and humming and low, almost agonized moans and slippery-wet sounds and a word here and there, Ronon’s urgent _yeah, yeah_ and Rodney’s perpetually amazed little _oh_ , all smothered under the next noise.

John found it distracting at first, but soon enough he was able to separate the hungry abandon of the kissing noises further up the bed from the shallow, controlled thrust of Ronon’s hips against his hand, the tight trembling in his thighs. Then it functioned as a kind of permission – if Ronon could let go like that, so could he, and John started to go down further, shameless and creative, testing everything he could reach with a flick of his tongue, until Ronon’s hand descended in his head, fisting John’s hair in wordless desperation.

“Fuck, fuck – Sheppard, fuck,” he gasped as he came in fast, messy spurts in John’s mouth, too much all at once to swallow, so that his eyes were watering and he was wiping his face dry with his palm as he pulled off. Ronon was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, but Rodney was watching John intently, panting from deep in his chest, with a shiny, wet mouth to match the one John knew he had and two high spots of color on his cheekbones. John gave him a wicked grin, and Rodney almost pulled his own nose off trying to get out of his shirt.

 

_“Explain it to me.”_

_“I can’t.” She thinks he’s just being stubborn, but he’s not. He *can’t* do it. “He’s not a superior officer – I mean, he is, but that’s not what – taskmaster, it means more than that. It’s – trust.” Only that’s not right, either, because you have no choice but to trust an officer in the field._

_Still, he’s been outranked by a lot of men in his life, he’s followed orders handed down from a lot of places. It’s not the same as putting yourself in a taskmaster’s hands, being honor-bound to be a credit to his name, to learn from him, to tend him, to share his food, his fire, his allies and enemies, to make yourself known to the world as one of the ones who follows where this man leads._

_It’s permanent and intimate and agonizing and uplifting, and he told himself when Kell broke his heart that he’d never give that to anyone again. That he says it now – he can’t *explain* it to her. The word itself is his explanation, his promise given out loud for anyone to hear._

_Nobody hears._

 

“You never miss a chance, do you?” Rodney said, snippy and vaguely admiring in almost equal measure as John slid the side of a slick finger along Rodney’s hole.

“No fighting,” John said cheerfully, pressing the tip in. Just that slight breach, more of a reminder of what fucking feels like than any kind of a fuck in itself, is enough to make Rodney grunt behind his teeth and lean forward from his hands to his elbows. That position is just fine by John, and Ronon doesn’t seem inclined to object either, even though it’s his sternum Rodney is pressing his forehead into. Ronon just reaches down and shifts Rodney’s knees a little wider apart with his hands.

“I can’t see anything,” Ronon sighed.

Rodney mumbled against his chest, “You want color commentary?”

“Yeah, that’d be good,” Ronon said. His hands traveled up the back of Rodney’s thighs to rest on his ass – the part of his ass that John doesn’t have an immediate use for – and he damn near purred when he said, “Just tell me all about it.”

John tried to be as noisy about it as possible while he stroked lube onto his dick, and Ronon returned the favor by shifting his hands to Rodney’s shoulders, pushing back against them as John pushed in. Now that was teamwork. “Oh, God, oh, God,” Rodney said, scrubbing his forehead against Ronon’s chest and spasming hot and tight and blissful around John’s dick. John gave him a second to regroup, smoothing his hands lightly over the sweaty small of Rodney’s back before taking a more solid hold on his hips and sliding out and in again. “It’s kind of – it’s a little much, I think I’m nervous, I could use a glass of wine, or a massage – don’t ask me why I’m nervous, I don’t think I have the brain cells to parse it all right now – but it’s good, it’s not _too_ much – it’s good, I kind of want him to slow down, but I also don’t want to wait, I’m ready to come, God, I’ve been ready to come since I _saw_ you....”

Something in John’s head snapped when he realized Rodney had gone literal, that he was actually _narrating the fuck_ for Ronon. He growled something incoherent and shifted his knees on the mattress, leaning his thighs more heavily against the backs of Rodney’s, and fucked him faster and more determined until the exposition devolved into, “Oh, oh, John, Jesus Christ, John, please, I need....”

Ronon pushed a hand between his body and Rodney’s, and John didn’t have any trouble figuring out what he was doing that made Rodney tense and shudder with his whole body. John’s palms were sweating too much to keep his grip, so he moved one to a better hold on Rodney’s shoulder, which made him lean up and forward in a way that wrung a mewling little cry from Rodney, and that was good, that was what he usually wanted, but Rodney seemed to have kicked down a door and revealed a whole new kink in John’s brain, so he forced his mouth to open and gritted out, “Tell him you’re gonna come, tell him.”

“I am, yes, yes,” Rodney gasped. “I’m going – to come – John, John – Dex – don’t stop, don’t you dare stop, don’t slow, oh, oh, yes – God – _oh_. Oh....”

“Oh,” John echoed faintly, his mouth pressed against Rodney’s back while their aftershocks ran in counterpoint to each other. Feeling a twinge in muscles that he didn’t want twinging, John leaned back onto his heels, pulling Rodney up with him to recline against his chest. John worked his fingers up and down the muscles in Rodney’s arms, peering around to get a good look down his body, hard-nippled and spattered with come, his chest heaving. “You love me,” John growled in his ear.

“Yes, well,” Rodney panted. “Nobody’s perfect.”

Ronon traced one hand up the back of John’s thigh and let the fingers of the other one lace together with Rodney’s fingers. “Again?” he said hopefully.

Rodney’s laugh was uneven and faintly hysterical. “Oh, _God_ , you’re too young for me.”

“Again,” John said drowsily against Rodney’s ear. “Just...in a minute.”

“You’re a damned optimist,” Rodney said in the accusatory tone that another man would have used to say _communist_ or _Scientologist_. But he put his hands on John’s wrists and pulled his arms around his waist, drawing John up snugly against his back. He rested his chin on Rodney’s shoulder and felt the warmth of Ronon’s approving eyes on his face as he let his own eyes fall shut.

 

_“I promised I’d answer your questions, and I would, except there’s not a word for it, these things don’t have words. If I said Rodney and I *ellevano-eyux,* what would that mean to you? What does it mean?”_

_He hasn’t spoken Satedan in years; he’s surprised he still can, almost. All civilized people know that you speak the language of the world you’re on. Like Teyla, he speaks English in Atlantis. Sometimes he even thinks in English, but not always._

_She frowns slightly, and he knows just what she’s hearing – the misfit, the translation that’s always approximate, never true. “That you have a sexual relationship – an ongoing sexual relationship. There’s an implication of a span of time....”_

_He leans back in his chair. Being right isn’t as much fun for him as it is for some people. “Yeah, see?”_

_“That’s not right, is it?” she says, a little embarrassed. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”_

_“It’s not your fault,” he says. She’s done the best she could. She’s done a good job, all things considered. “You don’t speak my language. I don’t think I speak yours.”_

 

Rodney spent forever in the shower, so that when Ronon went in the bathroom to piss, the place was clogged with steam. He finally got out at the same time Ronon was washing his hands. Washing his hands was one of those small luxuries that he really appreciated about Atlantis – the thick lather, the vaguely minty smell of the green soap. Especially in the mornings, when he hadn’t put on his bracers yet, he liked to get it up past his wrists, to work it between all his fingers and under his fingernails.

He put his hands under the sink, watching the soap rinse off and swirl down the drain, and he could feel but not see Rodney behind him, thanks to the fogged mirror. Rodney put his hands on Ronon’s back, smoothing them across his shoulders, and the towel wrapped around his waist brushed against Ronon’s ass. He brushed Ronon’s hair aside and kissed the back of his neck, making him shiver.

Ronon braced his wet hands on the edge of the sink and said to the empty mirror, “That was good, last night, wasn’t it?”

“Not shockingly, yes, it was,” Rodney said.

“You and Sheppard, you’re good together.”

“We have our moments,” Rodney said dryly. He ran his fingers up Ronon’s neck and behind his ear, then leaned in and murmured against his shoulder, “I find your inner yenta ridiculously adorable, although your low standards for a healthy relationship have always been of more than a little concern to me.”

He turned around against Rodney and put an arm under his ass to help hike him up a little higher against Ronon’s body, closer to kissing height. Rodney wrapped his arms around Ronon’s neck and stretched up for it. Ronon had been in love four times in his life, and none of the rest of them, nobody could kiss the way Rodney could.

They switched places and Rodney hopped onto the counter by the sink, which made him maybe an inch shorter than Ronon, the perfect angle for kissing. Ronon slid his hands over Rodney’s ribs, letting himself be distracted for the moment by Rodney’s mouth, firm and warm and welcoming against his.

“I want to tell you something,” he said, pulling his mouth away just far enough to speak. Rodney made a grunting noise that seemed to mean _dammit_ and _all right, fine, go ahead_ at the same time.

It wasn’t easy to know where to begin. After a minute of hesitation, Rodney prompted him by saying, “If you’re dumping me– “

“No,” he said quickly. “Actually, you...kind of the opposite? If you still wanted...me to live with you....”

Rodney’s eyes went big and shocked for a moment, and then he grabbed Ronon by the neck and kissed him again. Ronon laughed into the kiss and took hold of his wrists, prying him loose. “There’s only two words for sex in my language,” he said, his face still so close to Rodney’s that there was almost a shortage of air between them. “ _Kayetu_ is for...pretty much anything you do to get off. The other is for what you do with someone you’re married to – _ellevano’ax_. It’s a really old legal term that means owning a bed in common; it used to mean just being married, but now it’s – sexual, it means sex in your own bed, where you belong. I want you to know.... Everything we’ve done for a long time now, I think of it as _ellevano’ax_ , not _kayetu_.”

“Oh,” Rodney said weakly. “That’s.... Okay. I...love you, too, you know.”

“I know,” Ronon said, pulling Rodney against him and rubbing a hand over his back. “And I want you to know that I’ve said that – before, but just once. Just one person before you that it was _ellevano’ax_ with.” Rodney shifted away slightly, his eyes going to the bathroom door. “Not him,” Ronon said quietly. Rodney looked blank for a second, then scowled hard, and Ronon chuckled. “No, not him, either. Her name was Melena, and we were engaged. She died in the second round of bombing on Sateda.”

“Oh,” Rodney said again, thoughtfully. “You.... I’ve asked you about – things like that, before. You never said....”

“I wasn’t trying to lie to you. It’s hard. It’s...hard to talk about. I tried my best to save her, and I couldn’t. And then I was watching when she died, so....”

Rodney stroked his thumb over Ronon’s shoulder. “Fine. You don’t have to say anything. But you know you can, right? If you ever...feel like it.”

“I know,” he said, gathering Rodney against him again. “I’m going to be gone for a little while,” he said quietly, and he hung on while Rodney went rigid in his arms. “A couple of weeks, a month. Not long.”

“I’m suing you for emotional whiplash,” Rodney said into his neck.

 

_“Do you ever think about going back where people do speak your language?”_

_“What do you mean? You mean – leave Atlantis?”_

_“Not necessarily. But I understand there are other Satedans who have relocated, like you. You share experiences with them that you could never share with us – not just the loss of Sateda, but your culture, your worldview, your language – literal and figurative. Have you ever wanted to reconnect with them?”_

_Has he? At first, maybe. “I have a friend on Belkan,” he says. “Someone I served with, Solen. He’s a good man, a true friend.” He’s the man who put Kell in his path, knowing how that would end. He owes Solen either a round of drinks or a punch in the mouth for that. He thinks Solen would understand if he got both._

_“Why make yourself feel more alone than you really are?” she asks simply, and it’s maybe the clearest, most practical thing she’s ever said to him. He has no answer for it at all._

 

Rodney showed up in the gateroom in his regular clothes; John rested a hand on his P-90 and raised an eyebrow at him. “What? It’s not a mission,” Rodney protested. “We’re going to walk right through the gate and walk right back.”

“Rodney, we’re leaving the planet,” John said. “Sue me, but I feel like if you leave the planet, you should take some basic, elementary precautions. There’s such a thing as becoming too blase about space travel, you know.”

“We’re coming right back! It’s a milk run!”

Ronon came off the staircase and thumped a hand on each of their backs. “Hey, if he doesn’t bring a gun then he can’t shoot you,” he said cheerfully to John.

John snorted. “If he was aiming at me, I’d be the safest person in a five-mile– “

“Oh, yes, _very_ droll, especially considering it was your lackluster– “

“You know, neither one of you has to come,” Ronon said, less cheerfully, and they both shut up.

Elizabeth and Carson were both there to shake Ronon’s hand and wish him luck, and Carson gave him a cream in case his scar got irritated. John knew enough about medicine to know that wasn’t very likely to happen if it hadn’t happened yet, but it was a nice gesture. Teyla drew him down by the shoulders to touch her forehead and said, “Be well, my friend.”

“Watch the place for me, okay?” Ronon said, with a brief squeeze to her arm as the wormhole opened. John looked off at nothing, trying to ignore the weird, warm feeling in his chest at the idea that Ronon had a proprietary interest in Atlantis – in John’s city. It wasn’t exactly like buying a house together, but it was a kind of bond.

Right, because they were so short on _those_.

The Belkan gate was in the middle of the town square, and Belkan itself had that busy, messy look to it that meant it was a trading hub and not one of your more weirdly inbred Pegasus spots off the beaten path where they had arcane rituals of friendship that could kill you. Ronon’s message must have gotten through fine, because his friend was there to greet him – a middle-aged, stubbled guy with that look of an old vet whose eat, drink, and be merry habits were catching up with him. He and Ronon hugged hard, and then he gestured to John and Rodney and said, “And here I was hoping you’d bring the pretty one!”

Ronon grinned. “Eh, she said you were a raggedy drunk and seeing you again would be the bad side of heaven.”

“Dumped you, did she?” Solen said wisely.

“She’s a friend,” Ronon said. “This is Colonel John Sheppard, my taskmaster, and his favorite, Rodney McKay.” John exchanged a glance with Rodney that didn’t yield any confident plan for responding to that.

“Huh,” Solen said, and clasped John’s hand hard between both of his with an equally hard look of evaluation. “In my experience, offworlders make for bad command. You don’t have the soul for it.”

“Um...we’re sorry?” John said.

“It’s not like that, he’s fine,” Ronon mumbled, a lot less vehemently than John would’ve liked.

Solen appeared to ignore him, his eyes still locked on John’s. “Don’t misunderstand me. Kell was a son of a bitch and he got a faster death than he deserved, but he was a real Satedan taskmaster – the kind of commander that could take a weedy little boy from the pig farm like this one here and turn him into the youngest Specialist in the Infantry and maybe the best warrior I knew in over twenty years of service.”

“You know,” Rodney said sharply, “I haven’t known you very long, so you have time to continue to impress me, but so far that’s by far the stupidest thing I’ve heard you say.”

Solen seemed to notice Rodney for the first time, taking in his scowl and his slight flush. “Feel strongly about it, do you?” he said pleasantly.

“Yes, and if you’d spent half the time I have trying to patch the damage that megalomaniacal, child-molesting– “

John slapped his hand over Rodney’s mouth – something he’d always wanted to do, actually. “Rodney loves pigs,” he said with his best dumb-and-harmless smile. “He hears people take that tone about the pig farm and he just, well, he gets all heated up. Sorry.”

“Well, I didn’t mean any harm by it,” Solen said, sending a baffled glance in Ronon’s direction. Ronon shrugged awkwardly, possibly wondering if it was too late to pretend they’d just followed him through the gate by accident. “I’ll even the score – buy you all a round of drinks.”

“Maybe some other time,” John said. “We’re headed right back home – just came through for a chance to say goodbye to our friend here.” A chance to say goodbye that wasn’t in the middle of the gateroom, to be more specific.

“You can send him off with a toast,” Solen insisted, slapping Ronon’s back. Ronon smiled down at him, embarrassed and affectionate at once, and that was how John found himself in a Belkan pub, drinking his third stein of what tasted like a black and tan and trying to explain how he blew up a hive ship, which was frankly a story that was none too clear in his memory even sober.

He had to pay extra because Rodney threw up on the balcony.

After negotiating the extra fee, John wobbled his way up the stairs to check on his guys. Rodney was propped sagging against the balcony rail while Ronon carefully fed him sips of fruit juice and pieces of toast. “I can’t take you anywhere,” John said.

“So you’re just going to leave him here?” Rodney demanded, which was either a total non sequitur or John was drunk, or possibly both. Rodney was gripping the rail with one hand, the other fluttering spastically in the air. “You’re fine with putting him in the expert care of the same people who made him _like_ this, people who think it’s your right – people like you have a right to – _I_ never tried to make him love me, like it was his job, like he could be employee of the month – Christ! I didn’t even _want_ him to, I already _had_ a boyfriend!”

“I’m standing right here, you know,” Ronon said.

“You’re a cheap drunk, and I’m not your prom date,” John said.

“Fine, fine, fine, fine. A lover, a significant other, an object of my affections. I was the one – _I’m_ the one who loves him for free. These fucking...soldier, sir-yes-sir quid pro quos that you – that they all – they make me sick. I hate your friends,” he said with careful, drunken precision, switching his focus to Ronon. “I hate your dead asshole of a mentor, I hate the bitter, sludgy beer they serve on this rotten planet, and I hate that you can’t be happy in Atlantis. With us in Atlantis.”

Ronon put his palm to Rodney’s flushed cheek and said, “She really would’ve liked you.” The meaning of it was totally impenetrable to John, but it was impossible to mistake the tenderness in his voice. “Solen is who he is. He’s a friend, but I’m not like him – not anymore. If you think spending time with him is going to make me too Satedan to come back to Atlantis, you’re wrong. I’m coming back.”

“I don’t believe you,” Rodney said, small and distant. “How can I believe you? How can I know you’ll be back? This could be the last – could – how can I know for sure I’ll ever see you again?”

“You will,” Ronon said, rubbing his thumb over Rodney’s chin. “You know you will – and you know why. Deep down, you trust me.”

He kissed Rodney, slow and soft, and then took him by the arms and passed him unsteadily to John, who had to readjust his footing to compensate for the sudden not-quite-dead weight of a drunk physicist. John got him squared away in the crook of one arm and used the other to reach up behind Ronon’s neck. He pulled Ronon’s head down and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Take care,” he said quietly. “You’ve got more than one person waiting to have you home again.” He fished into the pockets of his tac vest with his free hand and found Ronon’s necklace, which he’d had strung on the leather shoelace of a pair of boots he’d gotten as an Athosian Christmas gift and never wore. Ronon looked down at it, surprised. “Well, you’re with people who give a fuck about it again,” John reasoned. “And you’ve earned it. I don’t want people looking at you and thinking...you know, that I think you haven’t earned it.”

He slipped the cord over his head, leaving it outside his shirt. “I know you guys don’t understand why I’m doing this,” he said, sounding helpless. “It’s just...when I came to Atlantis, I was one of the dead. It can’t be that place for me anymore, the place I stay in because I’m not fit to live in the world. Kell has to be part of my life – the good and the bad stuff he did for me. Melena has to be part of it, and the bombing, and being a Runner, and seeing my father die, and the skinny pig boy I was, and the things I was raised to believe in. All of that.... I can’t get anywhere while it hurts too much to carry those things. I do want to get back to Atlantis – to you, Rodney, and – Sheppard, and – everything there. But it’s not enough to escape to it. I have to go back to the beginning and start over. I have to _get_ there. And...when I get there, if I’m still the person you think I am, and you still want to be with me....”

In spite of a vague sense that it was highly impolitic, John said, “Uh...who are you talking to right now?”

Ronon grinned and said, “I guess I’m taking offers.”

“Dibs,” Rodney said.

John glared at him. “I didn’t know it was first come, first served.”

Rodney snuggled his head more comfortably in the crook of John’s shoulder with his eyes closed and said, “You’re always too goddamn slow. I could have been so in love with you if you were just a little quicker...on the uptake....”

He glanced up at Ronon, and the moon and the Pegasus starlight showed off the same amusement John felt in his smile and the same quiet, unshakeable adoration in his dark eyes. If the two of them didn’t have one other thing in common, they would always have had this. “Yeah, Rodney, I know,” John said, jostling him with his arm. “C’mon. Time to go home.”

 

_The next time she sees him, he doesn’t have an appointment. He strolls into her office and gives her a green scarf with dried white flowers of a type she’s never seen before sewn between the silky layers. “This isn’t necessary,” she says, but she’s touched anyway._

_“I know you’re just doing your job,” he says. “Look, I got it cheap, the stitches are showing on this end. Just take it, okay?”_

_“All right,” she says, running the soft material through her hands, touching the inverted stitching with her thumb. “There are certain Earth cultures,” she says, “where it’s considered respectful to leave a deliberate flaw in the things you make. It shows humility, since only the Divine can create perfection.”_

_“Huh,” he says. “So they like things to be, just...good enough.”_

_She looks up at him, more carefully now. A few weeks haven’t changed him, except around the eyes, and the way he thrums with energy. He looks rested, he looks relaxed – he even looks happy, but he doesn’t look patient. She’s keeping him. She smiles and says, “Yes. Good enough.”_

 

It was late enough in the morning that the day-moon had set into the ocean, but Rodney and Sheppard were both still in bed. Ronon thought they were both asleep, until he sat down on a chair to take his boots off, and Sheppard rolled away from where he was curled up against Rodney’s back, settling himself flat with one hand behind his pillow. Ronon made a small shushing gesture and glanced at Rodney, who was breathing loud and open-mouthed against his own pillow.

Sheppard rolled his eyes in a way that implied Rodney’s late-morning laziness was no concern of his, but Ronon could see the caution in his movements as he disentangled himself from the sheet and got out of bed. He was wearing his underwear; Ronon liked that, it meant that he was spending nights here, not just crashing into sleep after the sex. More than just kayetu, Ronon thought. Maybe these Atlanteans were right about that, maybe you’d always need more than two ways to say it. Hell, if every time it kept being different, maybe there could never be enough words.

He finished taking off his boots as Sheppard padded toward him. He settled his hands on Sheppard’s waist, and Sheppard’s thumb stroked his tattoo. “You’re not leaving, are you?” Ronon asked under his breath.

Sheppard shrugged. “Thought you’d want your bed back. He said you guys had made plans....”

“Yeah,” Ronon said reluctantly. “But still, you– “

He put his hand gently over Ronon’s mouth and said, “What, you think I’m gonna get lost between your place and mine?”

“No,” Ronon said, pushing his hand away. “I think you might forget that this is your place, though.”

“I know my place,” he said, ditching the teasing tone. “My place is Atlantis.”

“No bride but duty,” Ronon mused, hardly aware he was saying out loud. “No love but death.” It wasn’t as romantic when it was a real person, a living, breathing person who meant as much to Ronon as anything in the universe.

Sheppard’s mouth quirked slightly. “I admit I’m not exactly in the market for a bride, but you’ve got the other part all wrong – death and I, we’re just good friends.” More seriously, he cupped his hands around Ronon’s face and said, “I’m not leaving. I would never leave. I’m going to keep coming around as much as you’re both okay with having me. Does that sound fair?”

“Any time,” Ronon said. “ _Any_ time.”

John kissed his forehead lightly and said, “I’m going to take that as a promise. Welcome back.”

Ronon didn’t know if it was him sliding into bed or the smell of the pot of coffee Sheppard started before he left that got Rodney’s attention, but he’d hardly had time to settle his arms comfortably around Rodney before he was stirring and mumbling sleepily. His hand moved instinctively to pet Ronon’s forearm, and Ronon could feel the exact moment when the data started to add up in Rodney’s sleep-stunned brain. When it did, he flipped over to face Ronon, slinging arms and elbows dangerously. He made an odd noise, shock and a little bit of protest at being startled and a lot of eagerness, and Ronon grinned and kissed him before the talking started.

Rodney put up with the kiss willingly enough, but then it was all, “When did you get here? You’re staying, right – are you staying? Where’s – was John here when you got – what time is it? Is that coffee?”

He laughed softly against Rodney’s temple and said, “In case you’re wondering, I’m okay.”

“Of course you are,” Rodney said, but his attempt to scoff couldn’t hide the vast, almost giddy relief lying under it. He squirmed closer, pressing his cheek to Ronon’s collarbone and letting Ronon wrap his arms all the way around him, and said smugly, “I knew you would be.”


End file.
